a piece of this 'action' ... please??

CHINA: BlogChina aims for Nasdaq

BlogChina plans to be China's first blog portal listed on Nasdaq

South China Morning Post
Friday, July 1, 2005

By Jamil Anderlini

The company that launched China's leading blog portal plans to list on the technology stock-heavy Nasdaq exchange by the second half of next year and hopes to achieve a market capitalisation of more than US$1 billion, company officials said yesterday.

"I expect we will surpass Sina with our [initial public offering] next year," said BlogChina founder and chief executive Fang Xingdong, as he outlined plans for the next stage in the firm's meteoric growth.

In 2000, Sina Corp became the first mainland technology company to list on Nasdaq. It was followed by competitors Sohu and Netease.

Mr Fang, who was the first to coin the Chinese word for blog (bo-ke), has steered BlogChina into the dominant mainland weblog portal with more than two million bloggers as at the end of May.

With business expanding rapidly, he expected this number to reach 10 million by the end of this year. A blog is an online diary.

"China's internet companies have been successful at leveraging Nasdaq listings to raise large amounts of capital and significantly raise their global visibility," said Stuart Patterson, Nasdaq's senior managing director for corporate clients.

BlogChina, established in June last year, has gone from just one employee to 210 staff. "We are adding 50 employees a month at the moment," Mr Fang said.

The company was started with US$500 million in seed capital from Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund and will receive a second round of funding of US$10 million this month from a group of six venture capital firms based in China and the United States.

"A number of investment banks are interested in taking BlogChina to Nasdaq, but it is too early for us to have chosen any," said Daniel Yang of Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund.

Mr Fang said the company expected to break even by the end of this year.

Revenues have grown from about 400,000 yuan a month to more than two million yuan last month. BlogChina.com boasts a list of high-profile advertisers such as Dell, HP and IBM. Advertising and wireless charges form its primary revenue streams.

The company is introducing a pilot virtual payment system this month in which bloggers can charge for their content and pay a share of their earnings to BlogChina.

China had almost 96 million internet users at the end of May, according to the Ministry of Information Industry.

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=26292

Yes .... A piece of this 'action', would be nice, IMO.
:)
LC