The logo of Sina's Chinese microblog website Weibo on a screen in September 2011. Sina is planning a U.S. initial public offering for Weibo in the second quarter.
China's Sina Plans U.S. IPO for Weibo Internet Company Plans to Raise Around $500 Million From Listing in 2nd Quarter By PAUL MOZUR And PRUDENCE HO Updated Feb. 25, 2014 1:09 a.m. ET
China's Sina Corp. is planning to raise $500 million by launching an initial public offering in the U.S. for its Weibo microblogging platform. Paul Mozur explains what Weibo is and where it fits among the hierarchy of social-media sites.
[Warm Up]
China's Weibo social-media service has transformed discourse in the world's second-largest economy, giving a generation of young Chinese a way to reach millions outside traditional government-controlled media channels.
Now Weibo's owner hopes to take it public in the U.S.—at the same time that the service faces its biggest challenge to its four-year reign as China's top online forum.
Sina Corp. is aiming to raise roughly $500 million in a second-quarter U.S. initial public offering of the Twitter like service, according to two people with direct knowledge of the deal. Sina—which is already listed in the U.S.—has hired Credit Suisse AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to handle the U.S. listing, one person said. The Financial Times reported the Weibo IPO plans earlier Monday.
Along with the U.S. listing, Weibo could get a further boost from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the Chinese e-commerce company. People familiar with the plans of the companies told The Wall Street Journal that Alibaba is likely to increase its stake in Weibo to 30% from 18% if an IPO takes place. In April, Alibaba bought the 18% stake in Weibo from Sina for $586 million as it moved to broaden its mobile offerings.
Details of a Weibo IPO weren't clear, but the value of Alibaba's purchase suggests it would represent a minority stake in the business.
Alibaba's interest in potentially raising its stake in Weibo comes as it also considers its own IPO, in either Hong Kong or the U.S.
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[Time 2]
Alibaba's move to invest in Weibo last year was part of a brewing competition among Chinese Internet giants to capture the increasing number of Chinese tapping the Internet through mobile phones and gadgets.
Its main competition is Tencent Holdings Ltd. , which owns the popular WeChat instant-messaging app and poses an increasing threat to Weibo. Sina has said that online Chinese are spending more time on WeChat at the expense of Weibo. Tencent declined to comment.
Weibo faces pressure on the political front, too. The Chinese government last year cracked down on some of Weibo's biggest personalities and launched what it called an antirumor campaign, which raised concerns among analysts that the service's popularity would erode. Chinese authorities arrested a high-profile commentator on charges of soliciting a prostitute, warned others and expanded criminal laws that make it easier to prosecute people for their online activity.
In January, a government-established research group said the total number of microblog users in China fell 9% to 280.8 million last year from 308.6 million in 2012. It didn't specify which microblogs experienced the drop. Besides Sina Weibo, a number of other organizations offer microblogging services, including Tencent, Sohu.com Inc. and the People's Daily newspaper.
In a conference call with investors on Monday in the U.S., Sina Chief Executive Charles Chao said the drop likely stems from platforms other than Sina's Weibo. He said Weibo's user numbers rose slightly to 61.4 million at the end of December, from about 60 million at the end of September. He also said time spent on Sina's Weibo expanded 16% from December 2012 to December 2013.
He said Weibo in the fourth quarter achieved its first operating profit, of more than $3 million, on advertising revenue of $56 million. The company's overall fourth-quarter profit jumped to $44.5 million, or 59 cents a share, up from $2.4 million, or three cents a share, a year earlier. Net revenue increased 42% to $197 million.
Still, Mr. Chao said Sina's Weibo was experiencing a slowdown in growth momentum. He said Sina would continue to invest in the platform in 2014 and also seek to run more promotions, such as cooperation with popular television shows.
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[Time 3]
Weibo—which means "microblog" in Chinese—works much like Twitter, allowing users to send brief public messages to followers who can comment on or repost them. It was launched in 2009 and attracted large numbers of users as it became a sort of virtual town square where Chinese could discuss anything from pop stars to corrupt politicians. China's online community demonstrated Weibo's power over public opinion in July 2011, when it became a significant platform for criticism of the government's response to a deadly collision of two high-speed trains outside the city of Wenzhou.
Despite Weibo's popularity, Sina has been slow to make money off Weibo, partly over concerns that ads would alienate users. The $56 million of fourth-quarter advertising revenue from Weibo is nearly triple the year-earlier period but still less than 30% of Sina's overall net revenue for the most recent quarter.
Alibaba has allowed for the integration of its online payment platform, Alipay, into Weibo and has also been cooperating with Sina to feature advertisements from its merchants.
A person familiar with the deal said the Weibo listing plan is in part designed to ease management burdens on Sina, which also runs an online portal featuring news and entertainment. The person also said the listing would give Weibo better exposure to outside investors and enable the company to benefit employees who have shares or would be issued shares.
A recent Barclay's note valued Sina's 71% stake in Weibo at $4.1 billion, compared with its total valuation of Sina at $6.4 billion, meaning that a full divestiture of Weibo would rip away the greater portion of the company's value. Still, that could be beneficial to investors, given the relatively strong recent performance of Chinese Internet stocks and the potential for investors to put money directly into Weibo, long considered a core to Sina's future growth.
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Source：The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579402412939770616
Sina Weibo shares jump 19% in US debut By Paul Handley April 17, 2014 5:27 PM
[Time 4]
New York (AFP) - Sina Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, debuted on the Nasdaq exchange Thursday with a 19.1 percent jump despite an IPO that went out undersubscribed and lower priced than hoped.
In a spate of buying that suggested that Wall Street's waters are still welcoming to loss-making technology high flyers, and to Chinese firms as well, Weibo shares rose from the subscription price of $17 to as high as $24.28, before settling the day at $20.24.
That is good news for Alibaba, the immensely profitable Chinese online commercial gateway that is preparing its initial public offering for the US market later this year.
Weibo sought to raise $380 million by selling 20 million shares for as much as $19 each.
But underwriters could only find demand for 16.8 million shares at the low end of the offer, $17, bringing the company $287 million.
China's Weibo CEO Charles Chao (C) stands with Robert Greifeld, Nasdaq CEO, moments after Weibo began trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol WB on April 17, 2014 in New York City (AFP Photo/Spencer Platt)
Charles Chao, the chief executive of Chinese online power Sina Corp, Weibo's parent, shrugged off the undersubscription, saying it was mainly important to achieve the listing and establish Weibo's separate identity.
"It's a tough market... The entire IPO market is rather soft," he told AFP in an interview.
"To have a successful listing for us is probably the most important. We do not actually care too much about the temporary price for the stock," he said.
"If we can over the longer term keep executing our strategies and innovating in a very focused way, we can create shareholder value."
Weibo, launched in August 2009, is China's largest social media service with 144 million active monthly users. It is most often compared to Twitter.
But by allowing more content and functionality, it overlaps with Facebook as well. Twitter and Facebook are banned in China.
Weibo has yet to make a profit, losing $38 million last year on revenues of $188 million, and another $47 million in the first quarter of this year, though revenues jumped to nearly $68 million for the three months.
China's Weibo CEO Charles Chao takes a cell phone picture in Times Square moments after Weibo began trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol WB on April 17, 2014 in New York City (AFP Photo/Spencer Platt)
Chao said Weibo is rapidly building income from display and performance-based ads.
"We are making great progress in both advertising areas, serving different clients bases from brand advertisers to SMEs (small and medium-sized firms) to e-commerce merchants," he said.
"There is no question that (Weibo's) revenue growth is much higher than our existing portal business."
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[Time 5]
- China slowdown no worry -
A man walks past the office entrance of Sina Weibo, widely known as China's version of Twitter, in Beijing on April 16, 2014 (AFP Photo/Wang Zhao)
Critics say Weibo faces a challenge from rival network WeChat, owned by China's Tencent group, but Chao says the two are distinct.
While Weibo's messaging is open and public, WeChat users confine their messages to their own selected groups of followers, keeping discussions private and offering more protection from Beijing's censors.
Even so, he admits, the two compete with each other in terms of time spent by the users. Yet Weibo has the advantage for advertisers, he insisted.
"Fundamentally... a public network is much more efficient than a private network," he said. "A private network can never be efficient in terms of content distribution."
Chao also said China's economic slowdown was also not a problem for Sina or Weibo, and could possibly work to their advantage.
"Maybe a downturn in the economy will have some impact on the advertising business we are doing, but over the longer term, we're not concerned at all."
"The Internet has proven that it is very resilient... What the Internet does is, it increases the efficiency of everything, and so sometimes in bad times Internet companies can perform better."
In New York for the IPO, Chao ran into questions about China's tough censorship of the Internet. He argued that Weibo has been a key player in giving all Chinese a voice, and that China has progressed a lot.
"There is no question that each country will have their own rules in terms of regulating the content industry or content behavior by users on the Internet... China is no exception," he argued.
"We are very experienced in terms of complying with the laws and regulations in this area. So I don't think it’s a big concern for us."
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Source：Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com/weibo-ipo-below-expectations-raises-285-6-mn-034336602.html
Sina Weibo's IPO Is Not Going As Well As Planned AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE APR. 17, 2014, 7:11 AM
Weibo Corp., a subsidiary of Chinese Internet behemoth Sina, has filed for a $500 million stock offer in the United States, the ultimate exercise in capitalism, as it seeks funds to grow users in the face of pressure from newer competitors.
[Warm Up]
Sina Weibo sold fewer shares than expected in its US IPO which was priced below expectations ahead of a Thursday listing that takes place after tech selloffs on Wall Street.
The firm, often described as China's version of Twitter, sold 16.8 million US depositary shares, according to Dow Jones Newswires, while a person familiar with the deal told AFP each share was priced at $17.
That means it raised $285.6 million before the sale of any additional shares to underwriters.
The figures are well below the 20 million shares and $340 million it had been aiming for -- reflecting a cautious mood after the tech-weighted Nasdaq index tumbled for more than three weeks.
The pricing is at the low end of the $17-$19 range at which the Beijing-based firm had been expected to offer its shares.
In March, Weibo had estimated the value of its initial public offering at as much as $500 million.
The offering comes as Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba -- a shareholder in Weibo -- is preparing its own eagerly anticipated IPO later in the year, which is expected to be the biggest in the tech sector since Facebook's in 2012.
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[Time 6]
Sina Weibo -- launched in August 2009 to provide services akin to Twitter which is banned in China -- is a leading social media site in a country with the world's largest population of Internet users at 618 million.
But it is facing questions about the size of its user base as well as rising competition from local rivals including Tencent's WeChat, an instant messaging platform that allows users to send text, photos, videos and voice messages over mobile devices.
- 'Quite uncertain' path -
Zhuo Saijun, a Beijing-based analyst with consultancy Analysys International, said the disappointing price was not a surprise given the challenges Weibo faces.
As its value in delivering news and information decreases, people will rely on it less for information, he said, making "quite uncertain" its road to commercialisation.
"On that basis, it’s not telling a very good story, so it’s quite normal to see a cut in its valuation and everyone being downbeat about it," he said.
Weibo's challenges in transitioning from PC terminals to mobile ones pose another problem.
"Its user engagement and multiple competitors on mobile devices are one big important reason for its awkward situation," Zhuo said.
Weibo's ascent has also hit speed bumps due to a social media crackdown by Beijing, which tightly controls online activity.
Ongoing troubles in the Nasdaq -- fuelled by concerns that some tech stocks such as Facebook and Netflix are overpriced -- has hit a number of recent IPOs.
All five companies that went public in New York on Monday and Tuesday offloaded their shares for less than they had forecast.
And on Wednesday, an IPO by Sabre Corp, a tech company specialising in travel booking, saw it sell 39.2 million shares at $16 a share, raising $627.2 million.
That came under expectations for a sale of 44.7 million shares for up to $20 that could have made almost $900 million.
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Source：Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/sina-weibos-ipo-is-not-going-as-well-as-planned-2014-4
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发表于 2014-4-25 23:56:59
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