The mainland's leading blog portal eyes US$1b market capitalisation from offer
The company that launched China's leading blog portal plans to list on the technology stock-heavy Nasdaq exchange by the second half of next year and hopes to achieve a market capitalisation of more than US$1 billion, company officials said yesterday.
'I expect we will surpass Sina with our [initial public offering] next year,' said BlogChina founder and chief executive Fang Xingdong, as he outlined plans for the next stage in the firm's meteoric growth.
In 2000, Sina Corp became the first mainland technology company to list on Nasdaq. It was followed by competitors Sohu and Netease.
Mr Fang, who was the first to coin the Chinese word for blog (bo-ke), has steered BlogChina into the dominant mainland weblog portal with more than two million bloggers as at the end of May.
With business expanding rapidly, he expected this number to reach 10 million by the end of this year. A blog is an online diary.
'China's internet companies have been successful at leveraging Nasdaq listings to raise large amounts of capital and significantly raise their global visibility,' said Stuart Patterson, Nasdaq's senior managing director for corporate clients.