Sina Weibo surge in Nasdaq debut

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Weibo Corp made its debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday. [File photo]

Shares of Weibo Corp, the Chinese version of Twitter, rose 19 percent in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday.

The stock rose as high as $24.48 in the afternoon, briefly valuing the company at about $4.7 billion. It closed at $20.24, up $3.24, at 4 pm in trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

At $24, near its Thursday high, Weibo Corp is trading at around 26 times 2013 sales, higher than Facebook Inc's 19 times and Chinese Internet search-leader Baidu Inc's roughly 2 times, but still lagging Twitter's multiple of 40.

Weibo Corp's sterling debut could add to the confidence of its peers. Alibaba is expected to file as early as next week for a US IPO that could raise as much as $15 billion. That would make it the biggest internet company IPO since Facebook Inc's $16 billion coming-out party in 2012.

Weibo is also the first publicly traded Chinese social media company.

The micro-blogging service, owned by Sina Corp and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, priced its initial public offering at $17 per share, which was at the bottom of its planned range between $17 and $19. It opened unchanged at the issue price.

The Beijing-based company, which began trading publicly under the ticker WB, said it hopes to sell 16.8 million Class-A American depositary shares, less than its original plan of selling 20 million shares.

The IPO would allow Weibo to raise up to $328.44 million in capital. Twitter Inc raised $1.8 billion from its IPO in November 2013.

Charles Chao, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Sina Corp, said the setting of any IPO price is based on demand and supply in the stock market.

"Because of the recent downturn of the IPO market in the US, we are happy that we can still set Weibo's IPO price at the bottom of our initial targeted range," Chao said at an online media briefing to a group of reporters on Thursday night Beijing time, ahead of the IPO.

Weibo, which reported a monthly active user base of 144 million as of March this year, first filed for its IPO on March 14, joining seven other Chinese Internet companies seeking capital in the US. That doesn't include China's e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, which is approaching a highly anticipated IPO in the US.

Alibaba agreed a year ago to buy a 19 percent stake in Weibo for $586 million and plans to exercise an option to raise that stake to 32 percent.

Weibo was established in 2009. The company has only been profitable in the fourth quarter of 2013. The company reported a net loss of $47.4 million in the first quarter of this year. This is more than twice the $19.2 million loss it posted in the same quarter last year.

Revenues of $67.5 million in the first quarter of this year were more than double the previous year's, but they fell about 5.5 percent from the previous quarter. The company attributed the shrinking revenues to the seasonal effects of the Chinese Lunar New Year, saying the performance was in line with its expectations.