'Chinese Twitter' firm Weibo to go public in US

Sina Weibo, widely known as China's version of Twitter, is to go public in the United States Thursday at a price below expectations after a recent sell-off in technology stocks.

The microblogging subsidiary of Chinese Internet behemoth Sina was to make its debut on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol "WB" in an initial public offering (IPO) expected to raise at least $340 million.

Sina Weibo -- launched in August 2009 to provide services similar to Twitter, which is banned in China -- is a leading social media site in a country with 618 million Internet users -- the world's largest online community.

But the estimated value of the IPO, filed by Weibo with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this month, was down on the sum of up to $500 million indicated in March -- reflecting a gloomy market outlook after the Nasdaq index suffered more than three weeks of declines.

Indeed, the firm sold 16.8 million US depositary shares, according to Dow Jones Newswires, while a person familiar with the deal told AFP each share was priced at $17.

That means it raised $285.6 million before the sale of any additional shares to underwriters.

The figures are well below the 20 million shares and $340 million Sina Weibo had been aiming for.

And the pricing is at the low end of the $17-$19 range at which the Beijing-based firm had been expecting to offer its shares.

The offering comes as Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba -- a shareholder in Weibo -- is preparing its own eagerly anticipated IPO later in the year, which is expected to be the biggest in the tech sector since Facebook's in 2012.

Sina Weibo is facing questions about the size of its user base as well as rising competition from local rivals including Tencent's WeChat -- an instant messaging platform that allows users to send text, photos, videos and voice messages over mobile devices.

Zhuo Saijun, a Beijing-based analyst with consultancy Analysys International, said the disappointing price was not a surprise given the challenges Weibo faces.

As its value in delivering news and information decreases, people will rely on it less for information, he said, making "quite uncertain" its road to commercialisation.

Weibo's ascent has also hit speed bumps due to a social media crackdown by Beijing, which tightly controls online activity.

Troubles in the Nasdaq -- fuelled by concerns that some tech stocks such as Facebook and Netflix are overpriced -- have hit a number of recent IPOs.

All five companies that went public in New York on Monday and Tuesday floated their shares for less than they had forecast.

On Wednesday, Sabre Corp, a tech company specialising in travel booking, sold 39.2 million shares at $16 a share, raising $627.2 million.

That was well below expectations, which were for a sale of 44.7 million shares at $20 a share that could have netted almost $900 million.