Shein's business was built on a rule about parcels. Ship a cheap dress or a pair of jeans straight from a Chinese warehouse to a shopper in one of about 160 countries, keep the declared value low enough, and it crossed the border without paying import duty.
The United States scrapped that exemption in the summer of 2025. The European Union added its own flat $3.50 charge on low-value parcels from 1 July this year, and Britain is expected to follow in 2028.
The accounts moved accordingly. Shein lost $99 million in the first quarter of this year, against a $395 million profit in the same three months of 2025. The lost American exemption is one reason. A $328 million charge on convertible preferred shares, triggered by an accounting change, is the other. Revenue grew 1.1% in that quarter, and the company has told investors the first half will look much the same.
What is on offer in Hong Kong
The offer opened at nine on Monday morning. Shein is selling 280 million Class B shares, a tenth of them set aside for the Hong Kong public and the rest sold internationally, at between HK$47.60 and HK$49.50 each.
At the top of that range it values the company at close to $27 billion. Shein went into this year's investor meetings asking for $30 billion to $40 billion, and private investors put $98.2 billion on it back in 2022.
What the buyers get, and what they do not
A tenth of a vote each. The Class B shares on offer carry one tenth of the voting power of the founders' stock, which leaves the four founders holding 90% of the votes. Shein's own filing warns that the people holding those weighted rights can decide shareholder resolutions regardless of how anybody else votes.
The cornerstone money is largely money that was already in. Boyu, Tiger Global and General Atlantic, all existing shareholders, have taken about $383 million between them, with Tencent, Greenwoods, Taikang Life and UBS Asset Management alongside.
Even at the reduced price this is the largest new share sale Hong Kong has seen in 2026, ahead of the $751 million listing of the self-driving company Momenta Global in July. The market Shein is joining has raised about $41 billion so far this year, more than double the same stretch last year, and the queue in front of it belongs to artificial intelligence and chip companies.
