Why does Klook dare to pursue a U.S. IPO despite four years of losses totaling $500 million?

Going public while bleeding red ink: A travel booking platform seeks to tell a new story. ▲ Lead image | AI Sector | Online Travel 01 Klook is heading to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Recently, Klook—a prominent Hong Kong-based travel and leisure booking platform—publicly filed its IPO prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under the ticker symbol KLK, aiming for a listing on the NYSE. Its lead underwriters are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase. As young travelers increasingly favor independent travel and immersive local experiences, Klook has rapidly built brand recognition among youth travelers across East and Southeast Asia by offering fragmented attraction tickets, localized activities, and instant bookings—making it one of the go-to platforms for destination-based leisure activities among independent travelers. Klook emphasizes light-weight operations and strong supply-chain integration. Yet its long-standing competitors are formidable: Booking.com, Expedia, and Ctrip stand right beside it in the online travel industry. Looking at Klook’s financial performance, its prospectus reveals cumulative net losses exceeding $500 million over the past four years. Breaking that down: In the first nine months of 2025, Klook generated $400 million in revenue but posted a net loss of $141 million. For the full year of 2024, the company reported a net loss of $99.27 million. Notably, in 2023, Klook publicly announced—via a press release on its fundraising round—that it had “achieved overall profitability in its ninth year of operation.” Yet the prospectus shows Klook incurred a $142 million net loss in 2023—up 15% year-on-year from its $123 million loss in 2022. Put another way: Over the past four years, Klook’s books have bled roughly RMB 3.5 million per day. But that’s not even the most pressing concern. I specifically reviewed its balance sheet in the prospectus—and found two more telling figures. As of the end of September 2025, Klook held approximately $147 million in cash and cash equivalents, while its total liabilities stood at $255 million. Literally speaking, for every $1 of debt, Klook holds only $0.57 in cash. In its risk factors summary, Klook explicitly acknowledges that, given its “history of net losses,” it “may not achieve profitability in the near term.” That said, this hasn’t stopped its scale from expanding. Indeed, Klook is scaling aggressively: its platform now hosts nearly 310,000 SKUs, covering 4,200 destinations. Revenue has also grown year-on-year—from $335 million in 2023 to $417 million in 2024, a 24% increase. Yet while its business soars, profitability lags—and, more concretely, its reputation is fraying. In recent years, discussions about Klook have been frequent across Chinese news media and social platforms. A special report by Beijing Business Daily during the March 15 Consumer Rights Day coverage directly accused Klook of “converting refunds into points instead of cash, and demanding users withdraw complaints before issuing refunds”—labeling the practice as consumer ‘PUA.’ The travel industry publication Lüjie also personally experienced Klook’s refund difficulties and customer service buck-passing. As the platform grows larger, its service shortcomings become more glaring—and all this unfolds on the eve of its IPO.

How did this low-profile giant help Chinese sellers resolve overseas tax compliance—and earn RMB 528 million in annual revenue? Now it’s heading for a Hong Kong IPO.

According to data from CIC (CIC Consulting), as measured by 2025 sales, Aotax (Ou Shui Tong) is the world’s and China’s largest cross-border e-commerce compliance service provider—its sales surpassing the combined total of the second- through eighth-ranked market players in China. In China’s cross-border e-commerce compliance platform market, the company held a 21.5% market share in 2025, ranking No. 1 for four consecutive years since 2022. To date, it has served over 264,000 paying users. Technologically, Aotax is the world’s only tax-filing software platform officially certified for direct API integration with tax authorities in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. In August 2026, it launched ‘Xiao O’—China’s first AI-powered cross-border compliance product covering the full process from inquiry to delivery. The prospectus shows Aotax’s revenue growth has been explosive. Its revenues were RMB 240 million, RMB 350 million, and RMB 528 million in 2023, 2024, and 2025 respectively—representing year-on-year growth of 45.9% in 2024 and 50.8% in 2025. In the first half of 2026, the company generated RMB 386 million in revenue, up 65.6% year-on-year. On profitability, its adjusted net profit rose from RMB 37.1 million in 2023 to RMB 82.97 million in 2024, and surpassed RMB 102 million in 2025. In the first half of 2026, its adjusted net profit reached RMB 74.12 million, with an adjusted net profit margin consistently maintained at 19.2%. Its gross margin remained stable between 52.5% and 53.2%. By revenue composition, environmental compliance and corporate tax & finance compliance constitute its two core pillars—contributing 44.5% and 35.1% of revenue in 2025, respectively. The European market dominates overwhelmingly, accounting for over 80% of revenue throughout the reporting period. Regarding customer stickiness, its net revenue retention rate climbed steadily from 104% in 2023 to 126% in 2025. Despite these impressive results, the prospectus also discloses multiple risk factors.

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