(Yicai Global) Nov. 20 -- Yatsen Holding, the first Chinese cosmetics company to go public in the United States, soared in its New York market debut.

Shares of Yatsen [NYSE: YSG], which owns the Perfect Diary, Little Ondine and Abby‘s Choice brands, rose 75 percent to close at USD18.40 each on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, giving the company a market cap of USD12.2 billion.

The Guangzhou-based firm raised USD617 million from an initial public offering of 58.8 million American depository shares priced at USD10.50 each, the top end of the marketed range. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Asia, and China International Capital Hong Kong Securities were the bookrunners.

As China becomes the world’s largest beauty market, Yatsen’s successful listing will surely help Perfect Diary and other brands create new growth miracles, said Frank Wei, co-president of Yatsen’s key investor Warburg Pincus China. The firm’s lines are perfect representatives of the meteoric rise of China’s beauty brands, he added.

Perfect Diary is the only cosmetics brand to report more than CNY100 million (USD15.2 million) in gross merchandise volume on Alibaba’s Tmall online marketplace in each of the 12 months of last year and the first nine of this year, according to data from China Insights Consultancy.

Yatsen had 2019 revenue of CNY3 billion (USD456.3 million), while non-GAAP net profit was CNY150 million (USD22.8 million), its prospectus showed. Revenue hit CNY3.3 billion in the nine months ended Sept. 30, a 73 percent gain on a year earlier, though the firm had a net loss of CNY1.2 billion in the period as marketing expenses surged 153 percent to CNY2 billion.

The four-year-old company is continuing to expand. It signed an agreement on Oct. 30 to buy high-end makeup brand Galénic from Pierre Fabre, one of the largest dermatology and skin care groups in Europe.

Editor: Peter Thomas