Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service, managed to pull off its listing on Wednesday but raised less than it had originally planned as falling technology stocks and concerns about competition from its rivals unsettled investors.
The lossmaking company sold 16.8m shares at $17 apiece, the bottom of its $17-$19 range and fewer than the 20m shares it had been targeting. Alibaba, the ecommerce group and a major Weibo stockholder, also bought more shares of the company than originally planned, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.
Weibo had already earlier this month substantially reduced its IPO ambitions amid a sell-off in internet and biotechnology shares. The IPO values Weibo at $3.8bn, just over half the level it had sought when it set out to be among the first in a series of high-profile Chinese internet companies to list in the US this year.