It seems like Calvin Choi, a Hong Kong banker, has achieved fabulous wealth in no time at all. Less than a month after the 43-year-old took his AMTD Digital public on the New York Stock Exchange, his stake in the digital financial services firm has shot up 14,000% for causes unknown to his company. His entire holdings may be valued as much as $36.8bn based on Wednesday’s close stock price of AMTD Digital. However, his stake in London-listed AMTD IDEA, which is its parent and through which he owns the shares, is worth just below $500m exposing just how crazy its valuation currently is (Forbes does not currently include Choi in our billionaires’ ranks because of the way the holdings are structured).
While a spokesperson for holding company AMTD Group was able to confirm Choi’s shareholdings they did not comment on the market values of those holdings. In spite of being thinly traded stock, AMTD Digital’s market cap now stands at an incredible $203 billion. This implies that it has a price-to-sales ratio of 8,077 compared with Robinhood Markets’ P/S ratio totaling only 2.73.
The comparison has been made between this one and meme stocks that gain followings like cults from investors who influence prices together but we do not know if that has happened here: “There are few things going on here—thin float to start with some likely short interest and now meme stock angle,” said Brendan Ahern chief investment officer at China-focused ETF provider KraneShares.
Remarkably for a company with larger market capitalization than giants such as Walt Disney and Morgan Stanley today, it had only fifty employees across its offices in Hong Kong and Singapore as of February this year. But it has failed to perform well financially to deserve such huge valuation over there. For fiscal year ended April 2021, revenue rose by 16.9% to HKD 195.8mn ($25.2mn) compared to a year ago while profits rose by 8.9% to HKD 172.5mn, partly due to gains booked from equities investments in private firms.
He spoke at the Singapore Fintech Festival in 2019.
Calvin Choi, who used to be a Managing Director at UBS, is effectively the controller of AMTD Digital through his multiple corporations. His wholly-owned entity, Infinity Power Investments possesses 20.4% of AMTD IDEA (also referred to as AMTD International), AMTD Digital’s parent and has control over the majority of voting rights (51.3%) via Class B stock ownership structure. Among its assets, AMTD IDEA owns 88.7%, including all the Class B shares, of AMTD Digital itself.
AMTD IDEA’s stock also made major movements at both the New York Stock Exchange and Singapore Exchange where it is dually listed. The company’s share price tripled since Monday and closed on Wednesday with market cap estimated at $2bn as per my research from Forbes’. Thus according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires Rankings he theoretically would be sixth richest person in Asia after adjusting for Mr Choi’s indirect stake worth $36.8bn in AMTD Digital—and ahead of even Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing and Tencent’s Ma Huateng—if prices hold steady.. On Wednesday June 10th, shares of Amtd digital fell by 34.5%.
AMTD Group, which is the controlling shareholder of AMTD IDEA with 32.5% stake, was asked by Choi’s representatives to comment on their estimation of his net worth; in response, the group’s spokesperson said, “AMTD Group has no objections to such computations; however, we would like you to be mindful that aside from AMTD IDEA and AMTD Digital, there are other operating businesses within the framework of IDEA strategy run by AMTD Group.” The same spokesperson confirmed that Choi would not make any further comments.