December 6, 2021: -Didi shares soared nearly 14% in U.S. premarket trading Friday after the company announced plans to delist from the New York Stock Exchange and pursue a listing in Hong Kong instead.

Shares of the Chinese ride-hailing giant have been hammered by regulatory woes in its home country ever since its beginning public offering in the U.S. earlier this year. The stock is down nearly 40% from its initial listing price.

On Thursday, the company said it would delist from the New York Stock Exchange “immediately” and started preparations for a separate listing in Hong Kong. According to a statement, U.S. shares are to be converted into “freely tradeable shares” on another international exchange.

Investors hope for a smooth transition of Didi’s U.S.-listed shares to Hong Kong. The move by Didi to go ahead with the delisting rules out the risk of it being forced to do by regulators.

Neil Campling, the global TMT analyst at Mirabaud Equity Research, said Didi shares were such as surging due to technical reasons. Short-sellers who bet on the price of a stock sinking may choose to exit their positions with buy orders rather than play the waiting game, according to Campling.

“Risk of a delisting could trigger some technical cover trades as shorts may seek to close their positions rather than deal with hassles of waiting out delisting time with custodians,” he said in a note Friday morning.

Daniel Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities, said the delisting was “just another black eye for Chinese tech stocks.”

“The Street remains very various of Chinese tech stocks, and this Didi situation is another cautionary tale,” Daniel Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities, told CNBC, adding Didi shareholders would likely rotate to another SoftBank-backed company, Grab, to play the Asian mobility market.

Grab went public Thursday following a deal with the special-purpose acquisition company Altimeter Growth Corp. At the closing bell, shares of the Singapore-based ride-hailing and food delivery firm lost more than a fifth of their value.