China-owned Opera Software files for US offering

According to the prospectus Opera plans to sell 9.6 million American depositary shares (ADSs), increasing to 11 million if the underwriters exercise their overallotment option. The company has set the price range between $10-12 per share.

Concurrent to the offering, IDG Capital and Bitmain - a bitcoin miner that IDG backed last year - will purchase $60 million in newly issued shares at the IPO price.

Opera will use around 40% of the proceeds from the offering for R&D to strengthen its content discovery and recommendation platform and overall product portfolio. The rest will go towards marketing and distribution as well as strategic partnership, investment and acquisition opportunities.

Opera was founded in 1995 and introduced its signature web browser the following year. As of June 2018 Opera had the sixth-highest usage share of all browsers worldwide, including both mobile and desktop software, according to NetMarketShare. The company reported 322 million monthly average users in the first quarter or 2018, with its highest market share found in emerging markets such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

The company mainly generates revenue through agreements with search engines and with providers of online products and services. For the year ended December 2017, revenue came to $129 million, up from $107 million the year before. Over the same period, the company went from a net loss of $12.7 million to a net profit of $6.1 million.

The web browser business was spun out and acquired in 2016 for $575 million by Kunhoo Software, a holding company with several Chinese backers. Internet investment company Kunlun Tech holds the largest share of Kunhoo, with a 33% stake. Hong Kong-based private equity firm Golden Brick Capital owns a 5% stake in the holding company.

Kunhoo had earlier offered $1.2 billion for the entire company. The consortium revised its offer to $600 million for the browser business when it failed to receive regulatory approval for the full takeover, and reduced the price again when two mobile services units were excluded from the deal.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• IPO
• Technology
• China
• IDG Capital Partners
• Exit
• TMT