Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global will start trading on the over-the-counter market (OTC) on Monday, more than two weeks after its shareholders voted to delist the company from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
That move was announced on Friday in the US by Chicago-based Options Clearing Corp, the world's largest equity derivatives clearing house, which said the Chinese firm's trading symbol will change from "DIDI" to "DIDIY" effective at the opening of business on June 13.
Didi's shares on the NYSE on Friday closed US$2.29, an 84 per cent drop from the IPO price of US$14 in June last year.
The delisting "may negatively affect the price of and liquidity in the company's securities", Didi said in its filing in May to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On the OTC market, stock trades are made directly via a dealer network, without the supervision of a central exchange like the NYSE or Nasdaq Stock Market.
While the shift to the OTC market typically means smaller liquidity and less active trading, there have been cases in which a significant gain in stock price was recorded.
Luckin Coffee, for example, traded at US$1.50 per share at the end of June 2020 after its expulsion from Nasdaq over accounting fraud charges. But shares of China's Starbucks challenger, based in the southeastern city of Xiamen, last Friday closed on the OTC market at almost US$12, which is a 700 per cent gain over the past two years.
In the same month, Didi said it would not apply for public listing on any other stock exchange until it completed delisting, while assuring regulators that the firm's priority is cooperating with the cybersecurity review and completing rectification measures.