E-Cigarette Brand Aspire Files Prospectus in the U.S. for Planned Nasdaq IPO

On June 21, 2021, Aspire Global Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Aspire”), the controlling holding company of Shenzhen Eigate Technology Co., Ltd., submitted an updated prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), seeking a listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ASPG.”
 
Link to Aspire prospectus:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001844035/000110465921084173/tm215667d4_f1.htm
 
Eigate’s main business

Shenzhen Eigate Technology Co., Ltd. is a manufacturing enterprise established in Shenzhen in 2010. The company independently develops the Aspire e-cigarette series, the Aspire Nautilus atomizer, and the Aspire Atlantis atomizer.

According to official materials, the company currently has over 40,000 square meters of ISO9001-certified factory space, more than 8,000 workers, 200 e-cigarette production lines, and daily production capacity of 2 million pods or 500,000 disposable devices. In December 2020, the company also began selling ISPIRE cannabis vaping products in the United States.
 
Aspire’s largest markets are Europe and North America. It currently has more than 500 franchise stores in China, distributed across more than 30 provinces and regions including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong, Shanxi, Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Hubei, Henan, and the three northeastern provinces.

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2020, sales generated from Europe and North America accounted for approximately 83.6%, while China accounted for about 6.8%. For the six months ended December 31, 2020, sales from Europe and North America accounted for approximately 73.1%, while China accounted for about 15.6%.
 
Shareholding structure

The prospectus shows that before the listing, Liu Tuanfang and Zhu Jiangyan, a married couple, together held 72.5% of Aspire’s shares.

Other shareholders Liu Yuli, Wang Shaofang, Guijiu Zhu, Wang Min, and Ganglin Liu each held 5%. Aside from the shares held by Liu Tuanfang and Zhu Jiangyan, the remaining equity was relatively evenly distributed.
 
Company performance

According to the prospectus, during the two fiscal years of 2019 and 2020 (with each fiscal year ending on June 30) and the first half of fiscal 2020 (ending December 31), Aspire’s revenue was US$122 million, US$79 million, and US$44 million, respectively. Corresponding net profit was US$40.205 million, US$17.283 million, and US$4.893 million, respectively.
 
Intermediaries

The main intermediary team for Aspire’s IPO includes UP Fintech, EF Hutton, and Tianfeng International Securities as joint underwriters; BDO as auditor; Han Kun and Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP as the company’s PRC and U.S. legal counsel, respectively; and Tian Yuan and Sidley as PRC and U.S. legal counsel to the underwriters, respectively.