Lei Jun admits Xiaomi is considering an IPO (although he still doesn’t want to do it)

Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, image via Fortune Live Media

Over and over again, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has emphasized that his company is not preparing an IPO. Just a few of months ago he echoed his well-known refrain: “Xiaomi has no plans to IPO in the next five years.”

On Wednesday, for the first time ever, he said something different.

In a speech, Lei said:

Xiaomi has been around for six years now. I personally have a few companies listed overseas. Later, when Kingsoft listed on the A-shares market, it was very painful for me. And personally I don’t have a strong reason to want [Xiaomi] to IPO. I never started IPO procedures because I feel business hasn’t stabilized.

I’m considering following Alibaba’s lead, and setting up an internal options trading system to incentivize employees while we haven’t listed. But because we have investors and employees, Xiaomi is not ruling out an IPO.

“Not ruling out an IPO” – that’s a pretty far cry from filing a prospectus with the SEC, but it’s still the closest Lei Jun has ever come to saying a listing is in the company’s near-term plans. And with a less-than-stellar 2015 performance suggesting that Xiaomi’s days of high-speed growth could be over, Lei may now have both employees and investors saying it’s time to cash out.

If investors start pushing for an exit – and to be clear, we have no evidence that that’s happening right now – it could be tough for Lei Jun to ignore them. The company’s backer sheet is a veritable who’s who of top China investors and global players that includes Ratan Tata, Yuri Milner, and a number of prominent Chinese VC firms like Qiming Venture Partners and Morningside Ventures.

It’s also worth pointing out that although they are wholly unsubstantiated right now, there are rumors floating around in the Chinese scene that Xiaomi’s having trouble raising another round of funding. Yuri Milner has reportedly been asked about this but refused to comment. I’m not sure how much stock I’d put in those reports – even after a disappointing 2015, Xiaomi is still one of China’s biggest and most important tech companies – but if Xiaomi really is having fundraising troubles, an IPO would obviously be another way to give the company a cash infusion.