Luckin Coffee to price IPO at $17 a share

Chinese coffee startup Luckin Coffee will price its initial public offering at $17 per share on Nasdaq Stock Exchanges, CNBC reported on Friday.

This price is at the top of its expected range from $15 to $17 in a regulatory filing, indicating the value of the company at about $4.2 billion.

Luckin Coffee raised $150 million in the most recent Series B+ round of financing, lifting the Beijing-based company's valuation to about $2.9 billion, the company announced on April 18.

With the aid of new technology, Luckin Coffee provides customers convenient service with innovative business model.

"The old way is people looking for coffee. With us coffee finds the people," Luckin Coffee's Co-founder Eric Guo told CNBC.

As a representative of China's new retail based on mobile app, Luckin Coffee, founded in 2017, has expanded at a rapid pace.

With 2,370 stores opening at the end of the first quarter and 2,500 more are expected to open in 2019, making the total stores topping 4,500 by the end of this year, the company said in January.