58.com Inc. (or 58), one of the leading classified services in China, just filed with SEC for an IPO on the NYSE to raise up to $150 million. It’s the second time the company filed for an IPO in the U.S.. The last time is June 2011.
The site has been offering classified information on housing, jobs, used goods, automotive, pets, tickets, yellow pages and other local services since 2005. Earlier this year it introduced the escrow payments solution from Taobao hoping to boost direct transactions on its platform.
The service covers 380 Chinese cities with approximately 4.3 million local merchants being active on its platform as of Q2 2013. Monthly unique visitors were 129.7 million and monthly listings added were 56.4 million in the quarter.
58 developed separate mobile apps for end-users and businesses. In Q2 2013, 39.4% of the average monthly page views were on mobile apps.
Its revenue sources include merchant-facing membership fees and online marketing; the latter includes advertising and paid searches. The company made $10.7 million, $41.5 million and $87.1 million in 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively, with net loss of $13.9 million, $83.4 million and $30.4 million, respectively.
It managed to turn a profit, $2.85 million, in the first half of 2013, in which period 60% of the total revenue was from membership fees and 38% from online marketing.
Update: The total revenue in Q3 2013 is $41.6 million, with 58% from membership fees and 41% from online marketing, according to the newly submitted file. It managed to generate $8.5 million in net profit. Paying members were 353,000 as of the quarter.
58 claims that it’s ” the largest online marketplace serving local merchants and consumers in China”, with a 38% market share in 2012, citing an iResearch report. Its direct competitor, Ganji.com, is very close to 58 in market share. One month ago Ganji disclosed that it had raised $90 million in 2012 and wasn’t preparing for an IPO.
The company has raised a total of six rounds of funding since 2006. The total number is more than $180 million.
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