After a 2 week pause with no new listings, the market for overseas tech IPOs has come chugging back to life with a strong trading debut for video sharing site Xunlei (Nasdaq: XNET). That solid performance could bode well for online karaoke company Tiange, which has just filed for its own new listing in Hong Kong, continuing a recent trend towards more Chinese Internet listings in the former British colony. Both news bits provide the latest evidence that the overseas market for Chinese IPOs is finding a second wind after a losing momentum in April and May. That new momentum is likely to last through August when e-commerce leader Alibaba is expected to make what could be the largest IPO ever by an Internet company. Read Full Post…
Online travel is quickly taking on a new cult-like status among investors, with word of a major new funding for vacation rental site Tujia. This latest fund-raising frenzy in online travel looks very similar to what happened in group buying about 4 years ago, when investors pumped billions of dollars into a wide range of money-losing start-ups. Internet watchers will know that many of those companies later went bust, raising the prospect that a similar fate could be waiting for the online travel sector. Read Full Post…
Last month’s launch of China’s first new mobile services in a decade is showing early signs of shaking up the market, with competition likely to intensify as more licenses are awarded to a new generation of privately owned virtual network operators (VNOs). According to the latest headlines, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is getting ready to issue its third round of VNO licenses, which allow private companies to sell telecoms services under their own brands by leasing network capacity from the nation’s 3 existing state-run telcos. Read Full Post…
Two big fund-raising stories are in the headlines as people return to work after the Dragon Boat holiday, including a new IPO filing by online recruitment site Zhaopin.com and a big new funding round by a year-old mobile news app developer. The first news bit has seen Zhaopin announce a price range for its IPO nearly a month after making its first public filing for the offer. Meantime, the app whose name translates roughly to Today’s Top News, is showing big promise in the mobile news space, with word that its developer has just raised an impressive $100 million in new funding. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on June 5. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Lenovo (HKEx: 992), IBM Said to Seek Extension in U.S. Review of Deal (English article)
Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL) Announces Offering Of $150 Mln In Convertible Notes (PRNewswire)
Tencent (HKEx: 700) in Talks to Acquire Lottery Firm LotySynergy (HKEx: 1371) (English article)
As IPO Nears, Alibaba Preps Employees For $40 Bln Windfall (English article)
NQ Mobile (NYSE: NQ) Probe Turns Up No Problems After Short Seller Attack (Chinese article)
Techies have been buzzing about the huge potential of the mobile Internet for much of the last 2 years, but the latest headlines from social networking (SNS) giant Tencent (HKEx: 700) and recently listed mobile game developer Sungy Mobile (Nasdaq: GOMO) show the space is still rife with growing pains. Tencent is discovering that its wildly popular WeChat mobile messaging service is attracting not only hundreds of millions of legitimate users, but also masses of spamsters and scam artists and is trying to clean up the platform. Meantime, Sungy has just announced quarterly results that might look good for a company in any other space, but were clearly a disappointment for investors who were looking for meteoric growth. Read Full Post…
New York is firmly establishing a reputation as the preferred listing venue for China Internet IPOs, while Hong Kong is developing a taste for auto-related listings. That’s my quick assessment following reports that online video sharing site Xunlei has just joined a long queue of Chinese Internet firms filing to list in New York. At nearly the same time, car rental company China Auto Rental has filed to list in Hong Kong, reversing course from a previous plan to offer shares in New York. Read Full Post…
E-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) has formally ended its IPO process with a solid trading debut, capping a surprisingly strong performance despite signs that investors were rapidly losing interest in Chinese Internet stocks. But in a much lower profile move, smaller IPO candidate Chunkong Technology has quietly delayed its own New York offering plan, becoming the first formal casualty of fading sentiment. Chukong’s decision looks particularly significant because the company operates in the mobile gaming space, which is supposed to be one of the fastest-growth areas in China’s tech world. Read Full Post…
Market watchers are hailing the modest success of the new listing by online cosmetics seller Jumei International (NYSE: JMEI), which managed a respectable pricing and trading debut in New York despite waning sentiment towards Chinese Internet IPOs. I would agree with that view somewhat, since the company’s shares could have easily fallen in their trading debut but instead ended up rising a solid 10 percent on their first trading day. But I’d also advise market watchers to check the bottom line, which saw Jumei slash the size of its original offering by nearly two-thirds due to weak demand. Read Full Post…
We’ll finish out this peak earnings week for US-listed Chinese stocks with a look at fading e-commerce firm Dangdang (NYSE: DANG) and online travel site Qunar (Nasdaq: QUNR), which have both just posted profit trends that look quite gloomy. But while investors forgave the young Qunar for posting a large net loss, they were less generous towards the older Dangdang, whose profits nearly evaporated after recently emerging from 2 years in the red. Read Full Post…
The big IPO news of the day is Alibaba’s debut public filing for its long-awaited New York listing, but a flurry of other news in the space is continuing the recent stream of downbeat signals from the sputtering market. Leading the headlines are the latest terms for an offering by online cosmetics seller Jumei.com and a debut public filing for online recruitment firm Zhaopin.com, neither of which look too positive. The signals were equally negative from recently listed car information website Autohome (NYSE: ATHM), whose shares dived after it filed a fairly respectable first-quarter earnings report. Read Full Post…
