中國互聯網平臺新浪微博計劃赴美上市大綱
The FT's Josh Noble has brought us a scoop: Chinese internet platform Sina has picked banks for a spin-out of its Twitter-like micro-blogging service Weibo, the latest in a rash of high-profile deals in the tech sector.
中國互聯網平臺(Sina)已經爲其類Twitter微博客服務新浪微博(Weibo)的剝離上市事宜挑選了承銷行。這是技術行業一系列重大交易的最新一起。
The company has hired Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse to manage the New York listing, according to two people familiar with the matter.
據兩位知情人士表示，新浪已聘請高盛(Goldman Sachs)和瑞信(Credit Suisse)安排微博在紐約上市事宜。
Sina is looking to raise about $500m through the deal, which is expected to complete in the second quarter.
新浪擬通過此次上市籌集約5億美元。交易預計將在二季度完成。
Last year Alibaba, China's dominant ecommerce platform, paid $586m for an 18 per cent stake in Weibo, valuing the group at $3.3bn.
去年，中國頭號電子商務平臺阿里巴巴(Alibaba)斥5.86億美元收購新浪微博18%的股份，它對新浪微博的估值爲33億美元。
However, since then, Sina's share price has risen by about one-third, suggesting that Weibo could be worth more than $4bn.
但之後，新浪股價上漲了約三分之一，這意味着新浪微博估值可能超過40億美元。
Sina is due to report its fourth quarter earnings after the close of trading on Monday in New York.
新浪將在紐約週一收盤後公佈去年四季度盈利報告。
Internet stocks have been a bright spot for investors looking to build China exposure in the past year. Tencent, which owns a Whatsapp-like messaging system called WeChat, has seen its shares more than double in the past 12 months.
去年，互聯網股票成爲投資者投資中國的焦點。擁有類Whatsapp消息應用微信(WeChat)的騰訊(Tencent)過去12個月股價上漲了一倍還多。
The listing comes at a tricky time for Weibo. Active users of microblogs in China fell by a tenth between 2012 and 2013, according to a recent report by a government-affiliated research group.
宣佈上市的時間對新浪微博十分尷尬。一家中國政府下屬的研究機構最近發佈的一份報告稱，與2012年相比2013年新浪微博的活躍用戶數下降了10%。
Censorship has played an important role in that reversal. The Chinese government has cracked down on outspoken bloggers, known as “Big Vs” for the verification sign on their user profiles. Weibo has also faced increased competition from Tencent’s WeChat app.
這一下跌與中國的審查也有關。中國政府已經打壓了新浪微博上的直言不諱的大V們，同時新浪微博也面臨着來自騰訊微信的日益激烈的競爭。
Other social media companies have also run into trouble recently. Shares in Twitter were hit earlier this month after it reported less than 4 per cent growth in user numbers during the fourth quarter. LinkedIn also fell sharply after it gave a subdued outlook for 2014 during its earnings report.
其他社交媒體企業最近也麻煩不斷。本月初Twitter公佈了去年四季度用戶數增長不到4%的消息後，股價受挫。對2014年LinkedIn收益的謹慎預期也使得其股價大跌。
Sina said it did not comment on market rumours. Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse both declined to comment.
新浪表示不會對市場傳言作出評論，高盛和瑞銀也未予置評。
Additional reporting by Sarah Mishkin in San Francisco and Arash Massoudi in New York
莎拉•米西金舊金山、阿爾什•馬蘇迪紐約補充報道
