Kaixin IPO in 2 months

Kaixin, a leading social network in China, will be going for IPO in the U.S. in two months, said an investment banking source.

“They have finished every procedures. They are ready to go,” said the source, “They have to.”

With their largest rival, Renren, listed in the New York Stock Exchange, it is just nature for Kaixin to want to has its initial public offering and raise a few hundred million of U.S. dollar, so as to remain in the game.

50 million monthly active users in February

Founded in March 2008 by former Sina CTO, Cheng Binghao, Kaixin is one of the most popular social network in China.  It built its popularity by attracting white collar users with social games, such as parking war, farm, aquarium, etc.  In February, it has over 100 million registered users and over 50 million visited it every month. It has over 8 billion page views per week.

Recently, it started losing its appeal to some extend as other social networks, including Renren, Tencent, etc., also came up with their own social games. The rise of  Sina Weibo, the Twitter like service offered Sina, among the white collar users also make Kaixin’s popularity decrease.

For Kaixin’s IPO, the good news is: Renren’s IPO got huge interests from investor. Just a few days before its IPO, Renren increased its IPO price range by over 25%, from US$9-11 to US$12-14.  The final offering price was set at the top of the range, US$14. It  raised over US$743 million dollar for its IPO, much more than the US$ 584 million it originally planned to raise.

The bad news is: Renren has dropped below its IPO price just a few days after listing.  It is trading at US$12.84,  or 8% below IPO price, on Tuesday (at around 1:00 am when I write this post).

The good news is: People began to doubt Renren’s claim of being Facebook in China.

The bad news is: If Renren is not Facebook in China, Kaixin is not, either.  Why investors want to pay a high price for it?