Fewer Chinese tech companies to list in US this year

(Agenices) Updated: 2015-01-20 07:39

Review site

Meituan.com, which started up in March 2010, has since attracted investments from companies including private-equity firm Sequoia Capital Operations LLC and Alibaba, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Dianping, the review website based in Shanghai, said its mobile app users surpassed 150 million as of June. Tencent Holdings Ltd, Asia's second-largest Internet company by market value, purchased a stake of about 20 percent in the company in February. Its founder, Zhang Tao, said in an interview in October 2013 that the company may be worth more than $10 billion.

Each of the companies may plan to raise between $400 million and $600 million through their initial offerings, the analysts estimated.

Wowo Ltd, a platform for online stores of local lifestyle merchants, plans to raise $40 million, according to its Jan 9 filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Xiaomi Corp, a smartphone maker, the e-commerce unit of games developer NetEase Inc and classifieds website Ganji.com are also among companies seeking IPOs this year, according to the analysts who track China's Internet sector.

Investor appetite

The biggest obstacle to more listings is poor market conditions, according to Chiheng Tan, an analyst at Granite Point Capital Inc, which invests in Chinese Internet companies.

"The supply of IPO companies isn't an issue, and there are still a lot of good Internet companies in China," he said by e-mail last Thursday. "It all depends on the market appetite for Chinese companies. If the market can offer higher valuations than the private sector, many more companies will go public."

US investors still like "mid- and large-size deals, in particular technology companies and deals linked to the consumer," said Josef Schuster, the founder of IPOX Schuster LLC in Chicago.