Business / Gadgets

Wall Street preps for more Chinese dotcom listings

By Gao Yuan (China Daily) Updated: 2014-03-06 02:12

According to Dealogic, an investment consultancy, Chinese initial public offerings raised almost $1 billion from the US in 2013.

Wall Street preps for more Chinese dotcom listings

The amount was five times higher than 2012's figure but still shy of the pre-scandal year of 2010 when more than $4 billion was raised on Wall Street.

Analysts believe the public offerings of online marketplace 58.com and travel-booking site Qunar Cayman Islands Ltd in late 2013 opened the door for a new round of US IPOs by Chinese Internet companies.

Internet companies in China have accumulated enough momentum over the past two years and there is no reason for the number of IPOs not to increase this year, Paul Lau, a partner at KPMG China told China Daily in an earlier interview.

A full spectrum of websites, including Autohome.com.cn, an automotive information portal, and 500.com Ltd, an online lottery site, successfully listed in New York late last year.

Both stocks had more than doubled their IPO prices as of Wednesday. Around 15 to 20 Chinese firms are expected to go public in the US this year, according to an NYSE Euronext Inc estimate.

The world's second-largest economy has become the third-largest country by the number of listed companies on the New York Stock Exchange, following the US and Canada.

China's vibrant cyber economy was the major factor behind US IPOs, analysts said. The nation had more than 600 million regular Internet users and 500 million mobile Internet users as of the end of 2013, according to China Internet Network Information Center, a government-backed industry regulatory body.

Online shopping, social networking, video sharing and location-based services were the top businesses for the industry. Sina Weibo, the largest micro-blogging service in China by user numbers, is contemplating a New York IPO this summer from which the company plans to raise around $500 million, said Xinhua News Agency.

The decision, considered late by some, came after China Internet Network Information Center said 28 million Internet users quit using micro blogs in China in 2013.

The biggest IPO may happen in the latter half of this year, however. JD.com, the second largest business-to-customer shopping website in China, is planning a $1.5 billion IPO in the US.

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