Blog Portal to float

Filed in archive Venture Capital on July 8, 2005

It is hard to say how trustworthy this source really is but it appears Chinese BlogChina is thinking about floating the company at NASDAQ:

"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.

....

The company was started with US$500 million in seed capital from Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund and will receive a second round of funding of US$10 million this month from a group of six venture capital firms based in China and the United States.

"A number of investment banks are interested in taking BlogChina to Nasdaq, but it is too early for us to have chosen any," said Daniel Yang of Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund.

Mr Fang said the company expected to break even by the end of this year.

Revenues have grown from about 400,000 yuan a month to more than two million yuan last month. BlogChina.com boasts a list of high-profile advertisers such as Dell, HP and IBM. Advertising and wireless charges form its primary revenue streams. "

Strange story isn't it? First the company is started with a $500 million in seed capital (which is a huge number anyways) than it raises $10 million from VCs and shows surprisingly small revenues ($250,000 in 2004) to float at $1 billion.

If this is no dotcom story what is?

There is also a 'research report' (PDF, 92KB) from Pacific Epoch for the company including an recent interview with CEO Fang Xindong.

Thanks to BlogHerald for pointing me to it.