General Chat, page-7546

Example of the ADR/ADS Distinction

For example, if a U.S. investor wanted to invest in CanCorp, the investor would need to go to their broker and purchase a number of ADRs that are equal to the amount of CanCorp shares that they want. In this case, the ADRs are the receipts that the investor has to purchase, whereas the ADSs represent the underlying shares (CanCorp) that were invested in.

Using a real company in another example, China Online Education Group (COE), a provider of online English language education services in China, has ADS that represents 15 Class A ordinary shares. The company issued 2,400,000 ADS on the NYSE in its public offering on June 10, 2016.