Weibo, the Twitter of China, Debuts Weak IPO Pricing

All of the 16,800,000 ADSs in the offering are offered by Weibo. What investors will want to keep in mind was that Weibo was expecting to sell 20 million ADSs and that the price range was $17 to $19 per share.

Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse acted as joint book runners for the IPO. The underwriting syndicate has been given a 30-day overallotment option to purchase up to 2,520,000 additional ADSs from Weibo.

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As of March 2014, Weibo claimed to have 143.8 million monthly average users and 66.6 million daily average users. Another representation from the company was that more than 70% of its monthly average users in December 2013 accessed Weibo from mobile devices at least once during the month.

Weibo further said:

Media outlets use Weibo as a source of news and a distribution channel for their headline news. Government agencies and officials use Weibo as an official communication channel for disseminating timely information and gauging public opinion to improve public services. Individuals and charities use Weibo to make the world a better place by launching charitable projects, seeking donations and volunteers and leveraging the celebrities and organizations on Weibo to amplify their social influence.

The financial media was telegraphing that Weibo is coming public at roughly one-sixth of the value of Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR). After raising $285.6 million in the offering, Weibo’s market value is being reported as almost $3.5 billion. Twitter’s market value is roughly $25 billion.