Weibo, the influential microblogging service owned by Sina, has reportedly raised just $285.6 million in its initial public offering. Weibo, which has about 143.8 million monthly active users and is known for its impact on public discourse in China, sold 16.8 million American Depositary Shares for $17 each. Those figures mean it underperformed Sina’s own expectations, which were to sell 20 million ADSs at between $17 and $19 per share.
Sina Weibo has sold fewer shares than expected in its US IPO which has been priced below expectations, a report said Thursday, ahead of its listing which takes place after selloffs on Wall Street. The Beijing-based firm, often described as China’s version of Twitter, sold 16.8 million US depositary shares at $17, raising $285.6 million before the sale of any additional shares to underwriters, Dow Jones Newswires said, quoting two people familiar with the deal. Those figures are well below the 20 million shares and $340 million which it had been aiming for — reflecting a cautious mood after the tech-weighted Nasdaq index tumbled for more than three weeks.
