Baidu.com Inc (
The IPO late Thursday raised a total of US$109.1 million -- US$86.6 million for Beijing-based Baidu, which sold 3.21 million US depositary shares, and the remainder for company insiders who sold 831,706 shares.
The pricing set the stage for one of China's early Internet icons to make its Wall Street debut yesterday morning. The company's shares will trade on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the ticker symbol "BIDU" -- an echo of its name's pronunciation, "by doo." The name was inspired by a 900-year-old love poem.
PHOTO: AP
Baidu is tiny by US standards. The company earned US$1.8 million on revenue of US$13.6 million during the first half this year. Investors are betting Baidu will grow rapidly as more of China's population becomes hooked on the Internet. An IPO gives Baidu a market value of about US$856 million.
IPO analyst Paul Bard expects Baidu's shares to rise even higher when NASDAQ trading begins, because Baidu bisects two hot spots: Internet search engines and China. The relatively small number of shares issued in the IPO is also expected to drive up the price.
"Baidu is operating in the largest and fastest growing market in the world, so it has created a lot of intrigue and excitement about the company," said Bard, who tracks the market for IPOhome.com.
The enthusiasm prompted Baidu's investment bankers, led by Goldman Sachs, to raise the IPO price from an initial target range of US$19 to US$21 per share.
Launched five-and-a-half years ago by US-educated engineers Robin Li (李彥宏) and Eric Xu (徐勇), Baidu has emerged as the second-most popular Web site in China and the country's most popular Internet search engine.
Baidu's early lead in Chinese-language online search has inspired comparisons to Google Inc, which has ridden the moneymaking prowess of its search engine to a market value of US$85 billion, less than a year after its ballyhooed IPO.
Google earned US$712 million on revenue of US$2.6 billion during the first half of this year, raising hopes that Baidu might some day enjoy similar success if it remains a go-to Web site in a country that accounts for one-fifth of the world's population.
Apparently, even Google likes Baidu's potential. The Mountain View-based company invested US$5 million in Baidu last year, securing a 2.6 percent stake worth US$20.2 million after Thursday's IPO.
Baidu's biggest shareholder is from the US -- Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with a 28.1 percent stake worth US$221 million at the IPO price.
Li, the company's 36-year-old chief executive officer, also hit the jackpot with Thursday's IPO. His 25.8 percent stake is worth US$203 million.
Despite its investment in the company, Google represents a major threat to Baidu because the company is gearing up for a major push into China. Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp, which rank second and third, respectively, behind Google in US share of the search engine market, also have designs on China.
Like Google, Baidu so far has made most of its money from text-based ads that are tied to search requests and generate a commission whenever the commercial links are clicked upon.
Although its business model mirrors Google, Baidu faces different challenges.
China's Communist government and its history of censorship poses one of the biggest potential stumbling blocks.
In 2002, the government shut down Baidu for a week and fined the company for producing search results with content that were considered "socially harmful," according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
Requests for MP3 music files account for 21 percent of Baidu's search requests, a frequency that has provoked two lawsuits for alleged copyright infringement.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS