Chinese Internet company Sina Corp (新浪) plans to spin off its microblogging service, Sina Weibo (微博), in a US initial public offering (IPO) to raise UD$500 million, a person familiar with the deal said yesterday.
The person, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the plan, said investment banks Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have been hired to manage the initial public offering in New York.
The share sale, which has not been officially announced, is expected to be carried out in the second quarter.
Sina’s plan was first reported by the Financial Times on Monday and comes as other Chinese Internet heavyweights are also preparing share sales.
Online retailer JD.com (京東) filed for a US stock listing last month, while Alibaba Group (阿里巴巴), China’s largest e-commerce company, is planning an IPO that is widely expected to happen this year and could value the company at more than US$100 billion.
Alibaba bought an 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo for US$586 million in April last year.
Chinese microblogs have enjoyed explosive growth as users have taken to social media to share information in a country where the Web is strictly regulated. Yet numbers have been crimped recently by tighter government controls on what can be posted and reposted.
Chinese microblogs had 281 million users at the end of last year, down 9 percent from the previous year, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
The decline comes as Web users in the country shift to smartphone-based instant messaging services such as Tencent’s (騰訊) WeChat, which has surged in popularity since 2012, threatening Sina Weibo’s dominance in information sharing. WeChat and similar apps are increasingly incorporating social media functions that resemble microblog features.
Sina on Monday reported that fourth-quarter earnings jumped 18-fold to US$44.5 million, as Sina Weibo turned an operating profit for the first time thanks to rising revenue from advertising, games and VIP membership fees.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained