The latest major Chinese web property to float on the US stock market is the dating site Jiayuan. Along with US twin Friendfinder, it failed to capture investor confidence with shares losing ground in early trading on Nasdaq last week. New York still seems to be the place for flotation, but have the investors judged this one right? Judge the numbers yourself…
Jiayuan operates the largest online dating site in China, and raised $78.1 million in its initial public offering.
The stock fell 48 cents, or 4.4 percent, to close at $10.52 in its first day of trading on Friday.
This is the latest sign of investor fatigue with a wave of Chinese companies flocking to US exchanges.
Chinese offerings have been grabbing headlines in the past months as a dozen Chinese companies, mostly Internet ventures such as social netowrking site RenRen, rushed to list in New York since the start of the year.
The company priced its offering of 7.1 million American depositary shares at $11 each. Every two American depositary shares reflect represent three ordinary shares of the company. Of the total sold, 6.7 million were offered by the company and the remainder by a shareholder.
The ADSs are listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “DATE”.
If underwriters exercise their option to buy an added 1,065,000 ADSs from shareholders, the IPO could raise a total of $89.8 million.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. are serving as joint bookrunners for the offering. The co-managers are China International Capital Corporation Ltd., Oppenheimer & Co. and Stifel Nicolaus Weisel.
