Business

Saturday September 5, 2009

Shanda seeks to raise US$800m from US listing


NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO: Chinese technology company Shanda Interactive Entertainment is planning to spin off its video games unit and raise as much as US$800mil in a initial public offering in the United States, looking to follow in the footsteps of rival Sohu.com

The unit, Shanda Games Ltd, plans to list shares on Nasdaq, according to a prospectus filed on Thursday.

Shanda Games has produced popular Chinese video games such as The World of Legend. In April it launched the multiplayer online role-playing game AION in China after licensing it from South Korea’s NCSoft Corp.

Shanda is the No.1 company in China’s fast-growing online game business, a market that analysts say is increasingly attracting investor interest.

“Investors are looking for growth stories and growth is not happening in US gaming names,” said ThinkEquity analyst Atul Bagga.

Chinese online gaming companies were increasing their revenues by 40% to 50 % a year and boast healthy margins, Bagga said.

In April, Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com took its gaming unit, Changyou.com Ltd, public in a US$138mil IPO on Nasdaq.

Changyou.com shares are 138.3% above their IPO price, making the deal the strongest performing IPO of 2009.

Tian Hou, an analyst with Pali Research, said that online, multi-player games are particularly well suited to China, which has the world’s largest Internet population.

“If you look at Chinese Internet user growth, the majority of uses for a regular teenager or young kid to become an Internet user is games and other forms of entertainment,” said Hou.

Large, deep-pocketed companies like Shanda enjoyed an advantage in the market by acquiring smaller game titles and distributing them on its infrastructure, Hou said.

“The bigger the successful game company becomes, the higher the barrier to entry becomes,” she said.

As of Aug. 31, 2009, Shanda Games operated 18 multiplayer role playing games and 11 advanced casual games, with 16 more role playing games and eight advanced casual games in its development pipeline. — Reuters

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