Lilium (06658.HK) Surges Over 180% on Meme-Driven IPO

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Wenser (@wenser2010 )

Are you okay? Are you okay? If you're fine, have a Liuliu Plum!

Once upon a time, Yang Mi’s catchy advertising slogan brought Liuli Mei into countless households, and the company behind it, after decades of accumulation, has now officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming Hong Kong’s “first snack company focused on green plums.” It is reported that its offering price was HK$43.58, with an opening price of HK$95—a surge of approximately 116% compared to the offer price of HK$42; intraday, it peaked at HK$127.50, up more than 190%; it has since retreated to HK$125, still representing a gain of over 186%.

But unlike what many expected, the sharp rise in the stock price of Liuli Mei (06658.HK) was not due to a revival of the “new consumption, new retail, new snacks” narrative — rather, it was because its name’s initials coincidentally matched “LLM” (large language model), riding the wave of today’s 45% surge in Zhipu (02513.HK).

Many refer to it as the "authentic AI large language model stock," and vast amounts of speculative capital have flooded in. Whether acknowledged or not, global stock markets may be entering the era of "meme stocks."

First, let’s cover the basic details of Liuliumei’s IPO: This is Liuliumei’s fourth attempt to enter the capital market.

In 2019, Liuli Mei failed to list on the A-share market; in 2025, two attempts to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange both expired; until May 21 of this year, after submitting updated listing materials for the third time and changing its name from “Liuli Mei Group Co., Ltd.” to “Liuli Mei Co., Ltd.,” it successfully went public in less than a month. It must be said that sometimes, a name really does seem like fate.

According to the allocation results announced by the company, the public offering portion of this IPO received approximately 6,586.73 times oversubscription. The final number of shares offered in the public offering is 1.1465 million, accounting for about 10% of the global offering. Approximately 180,500 valid applications were received, with around 11,465 applications successful, resulting in a subscription rate of just 1.5% for one lot, meaning the success rate for one lot was as low as 1.5%, indicating extremely intense demand. For the international placement, Liuliu Mei received 2.64 times oversubscription, with the final number of shares allocated in the international placement at 10.3176 million, representing 90% of the total shares offered. Compared with these figures, the popularity of Liuliu Mei’s IPO has surpassed that of Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, which listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in March last year as the “number one tea shop chain by store count,” whose Hong Kong public subscription oversubscription ratio was 5,258.21 times.

In other words, institutions are not optimistic but account for 90% of the share; retail investors are optimistic but represent only 10% of the share. The primary force driving the opening price increase comes from the open market’s free interaction between retail investors and market makers. This is precisely the power of “meme stocks”—transforming the attention drawn by memes into buying pressure in the capital markets.

Some netizens compared the opening performance of Liuli Mei with SpaceX, noting that the market rally was far more impressive than the latter's.

It is worth noting that "meme stocks" are not a new term that has recently emerged, but rather a category of stocks that objectively exist in major capital markets such as the U.S., Hong Kong, and A-share markets; however, the era of "meme-ized stocks" is undoubtedly the latest trend that has emerged in the past 1-2 years, with key contributing factors closely linked to the cryptocurrency market.

The earliest meme stocks are difficult to trace; we’ll focus on some representative examples from recent years.

GameStop in 2021 may have been the starting point for many people’s introduction to U.S. stock Meme investing, as retail investors, led by prominent figures like Roaring Kitty, united to squeeze Wall Street institutional capital, prompting numerous brokerages and exchanges to “pull the plug” to avoid risk; recently, rumors that GameStop was acquiring eBay caused market volatility and a sharp spike in its stock price.

Tesla and SpaceX, which recently completed its IPO, were also previously considered meme stocks due to their strong association and deep ties with Elon Musk, the globally renowned "trillion-dollar richest person." Before delivering concrete financial performance, both companies were regarded as highly speculative narrative-driven enterprises.

Before Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the A-share market had already shown unusual movement: "Chuandazhisheng" frequently appeared on platform trending lists and even hit multiple daily trading limits; during Trump’s campaign, when he was shot at and his ear was cut by shattered glass from a stray bullet, GoerTek (phonetically similar to “cut ear”) also saw a mid-day price surge as a result.

Last year, as Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations deteriorated, Fufu Shares, a defense stock, saw its price surge due to a patriotic pun on the phrase "capturing Japan," rallying for eight consecutive trading days with daily price limits up, resulting in a cumulative gain of over 100% and becoming one of the short-term "speculative stocks" on the A-share market.

In today’s capital markets, just like in the fragmented-attention, emotion-driven crypto market, the individual stocks and sector themes that generate the broadest discussions and attention have already become “focal points” for moving capital and liquidity.

The surge of Liuli Mei is also a prime example of the "meme-ification" of stocks.

As OpenAI and Anthropic's valuations rise to nearly $1 trillion, companies and stocks related to the AI industry—such as those in optics, communications, materials, and computing power—are experiencing a surge:

• NVIDIA has become the first company in history to reach a market capitalization of over $5 trillion;
• Stocks of Micron, SanDisk, and others have successively broken through new highs, with institutions raising their price targets accordingly;
• SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics drive the movements of South Korea's KOSPI index amid fluctuations in their stock prices;
• After NVIDIA's founder stated his confidence in Marvell becoming a trillion-dollar giant, Marvell's (MRVL) stock price surged.
• The new stock Serenity mentioned, Innolight (Zhongji Xuchuang), was misread due to a translation error as INNOLASE, whose stock price surged 10% rapidly due to $300 million in hot money inflow.

In the grand trend of "stock meme-ization," any connection to AI, association with the hype of large language models, phonetic similarity to popular assets, or mention by celebrities has become a market justification—and the ultimate stage for attracting both attention and capital.

Terms like “Trump-themed stocks,” “U.S. government-related concept stocks,” and “TACO-style trading beneficiaries” are also manifestations of this industry trend—typical strategies seen in the meme coin sector, which the crypto market has long championed as a highly attention-driven industry.

However, the capital markets are different, the market rules are different, and the scale of capital and liquidity is incomparable to that of the crypto market. After all, compared to the trading volumes of the U.S. stock market, Hong Kong stock market, A-share market, and Japanese and Korean stock markets, the crypto market’s total size of less than $3 trillion seems somewhat modest.

Immediately after its listing, SpaceX jumped into the top 10 global asset classes, while BTC has fallen to 17th place on the same list. It’s hard not to note how stark this numerical comparison appears—decades of dedicated development in the crypto industry can’t match the market valuation of a single company’s IPO.

Today, the emergence and increasing popularity of meme stocks may have become an industry trend. The fact that Joyoung released a product tied to the viral meme “Hakimi North and South Mung Beans,” which subsequently drove up its stock price, illustrates one key point: for today’s younger demographic and investor base, assets that evoke emotional responses, capture market attention, and stir liquidity are more attractive to buy.

Even if this brief surge of speculative emotion is just a passing fad, for most people, joining in is often the better choice. Of course, objectively speaking, the emergence of meme stocks does not mean unilaterally positive outcomes such as wealth creation or industry booms; sometimes, this process is also accompanied by negative phenomena like pump-and-dump schemes, one-sided exploitation, and emotional manipulation.

Just as the opening surge of Liuli Mei sparked outrage from some who accused it of manipulating the market to "rip off retail investors," others analyzed that its price rise might have been driven by Liuli Mei's inclusion in the Stock Connect program, allowing capital from the A-share market to buy in. The truth is likely multifaceted and complex; for us, perhaps the best approach is to align with this tide of the times and find our own path to wealth.