Weibo, China’s biggest microblogging outlet, is seeking as much as US$380 million in an initial public offering, joining a slew of Chinese Internet companies looking to list newly issued shares in the US.
The company plans to offer 20 million shares for $17 to $19 apiece, according to a regulatory filing Saturday. At the top of the offering range the company would have a market value of over $3.4 billion, excluding the underwriters option to buy more shares, the filing shows. Weibo, based in Beijing, plans to use some of the proceeds from the offering to repay loans to parent Sina, which currently has a 78 per cent stake.
In the first quarter, China-based companies announced more than $2.5bn of U. IPOs, data compiled by Bloomberg show. JD.com, the Chinese retailing website that just received an investment from Asia’s largest Internet company Tencent Holdings has filed to raise $1.5bn and Leju Holdings, an online real-estate company, said Saturday that it is seeking as much as $212m in an IPO.
Alibaba Group Holding, China’s biggest e-commerce company, agreed in April to buy an 18 per cent stake in Weibo for $586m, and plans to exercise an option to raise that stake to 30 per cent, according to the filing. Alibaba is also preparing to go public in the US, the company has said.
Weibo’s proceeds from the IPO and Alibaba’s investment will be $377.2m, according to the filing. Sina will have 80 per cent of the voting power after the sale, while Alibaba will have 15 per cent.
At $3.4bn Weibo is asking for a value of about 18 times 2013 sales of $188m. Revenue surged to that amount, from $65.9m last year, the filing shows. Twitter, the San Francisco-based microblogging service with more than 200 million users, has a market value of $24.5bn, or about 30 times sales. Twitter has gained 66 per cent since its November debut.
Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse are managing the offering. Weibo plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol WB.
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
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Founders: Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Turki Bin Zarah and Abdulmohsen Albabtain.
Based: Riyadh
Offices: UAE, Vietnam and Germany
Founded: September, 2020
Number of employees: 70
Sector: FinTech, online payment solutions
Funding to date: $116m in two funding rounds
Investors: Checkout.com, Impact46, Vision Ventures, Wealth Well, Seedra, Khwarizmi, Hala Ventures, Nama Ventures and family offices
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Name: Peter Dicce
Title: Assistant dean of students and director of athletics
Favourite sport: soccer
Favourite team: Bayern Munich
Favourite player: Franz Beckenbauer
Favourite activity in Abu Dhabi: scuba diving in the Northern Emirates
In 2018, the ICRC received 27,756 trace requests in the Middle East alone. The global total was 45,507.
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Game Of Thrones Season Seven: A Bluffers Guide
Want to sound on message about the biggest show on television without actually watching it? Best not to get locked into the labyrinthine tales of revenge and royalty: as Isaac Hempstead Wright put it, all you really need to know from now on is that there’s going to be a huge fight between humans and the armies of undead White Walkers.
The season ended with a dragon captured by the Night King blowing apart the huge wall of ice that separates the human world from its less appealing counterpart. Not that some of the humans in Westeros have been particularly appealing, either.
Anyway, the White Walkers are now free to cause any kind of havoc they wish, and as Liam Cunningham told us: “Westeros may be zombie land after the Night King has finished.” If the various human factions don’t put aside their differences in season 8, we could be looking at The Walking Dead: The Medieval Years.
Gender pay parity on track in the UAE
The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.
"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."
Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.
"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.
As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.
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How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
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