Qunar shares nearly double on NASDAQ debut
Qunar, a Chinese-travel website majority-owned by internet search giant Baidu, saw its stock nearly double on the first day of trading on NASDAQ on Friday. It betters the 42% gain posted by VC-backed Chinese classifieds website 58.com a day earlier.
After peaking at $33.99 mid-morning - valuing the company at about $11.8 billion - Qunar's stock closed at $28.40 for an 89% first-day gain. It had already increased the pricing range for the IPO from $9.50-11.50 per American Depository Share to $12-14, but ended up selling the 11.11 million shares at $15 apiece for a total of $167 million.
Baidu bought a majority stake in Qunar for $306 million in 2011 and, subsequent to the IPO, holds a 58.81% interest. Prior to this investment, the company received more than $25 million in funding from groups including GSR Ventures, GGV Capital, Mayfield Fund and Tenaya Capital. GSR and GGV hold 6.04% and 4.37%, respectively.
Qunar is similar to US-based Kayak.com in that it searches for the best flight, hotel and package trip deals offered by a range of travel agents and aggregates the results based on price. It generates revenue by selling sponsored search services and display advertising to travel agents as well as by providing web platform for travel agents with limited or no online presence.
The company's user numbers grew from 71.7 million in 2010 to 187.3 million in 2012, while web users increased from 200,000 to 21.9 million over the same period. It had 39.6 million mobile users for the year ended June 2013.
Qunar posted revenue of RMB501.7 million ($81.9 million) in 2012 compared to RMB123.9 million two years earlier. However, expansion led to rising costs, which meant the net loss widened from RMB4.4 million in 2010 to RMB91.1 million in 2012.
58.com, whose investors include Warburg Pincus, SAIF Partners and DCM, also priced its offering at the top end of the indicative range to raise a total of $187 million. 58.com and Qunar are the third and fourth VC-backed Chinese companies to go public in the US this year, following LightInTheBox and Montage Technology Group. This compares to just two offerings in 2012.
Sports lottery provider 500.com and app developer Sungy Mobile are among those currently working towards US listings.
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