Cloudary, the Chinese online literature platform from Shanada group recently withdrew their two-year-old US IPO offering citing “market conditions”. This decision from company comes just after they raised $110 million in a deal which supposedly valued the company 25 percent lower previous investments.
Cloudary founded in 2004, was a limited club member of China’s top Internet companies listed on US Stock Exchange including Baidu, Tencent and Sina.
In terms of IPO value Baidu-owned travel site Qunar.com is top on the list, expectations are also high from Alibaba’s much-anticipated IPO later this year.
In May 2011 Cloudary filed for a listing in the US with a deal worth up to $200 million, with BofA Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs as underwriters which were later replaced by Bank of America, Citic Securities and CICC HK Securities.
Official Company filing goes like this :
In light of current capital market conditions, the Company has elected not to proceed with the offering of securities contemplated in the Registration Statement at this time.
It may be u-turning on its plan to go public in the US, but there’s plenty of interest in Cloudary from an investment perspective. Its recent funding round saw Goldman Sachs and Singapore investment company Temasek Holdings nab undisclosed stakes. However, that deal is reported to have valued Cloudary at $600 million, which is some 25 percent lower than it was valued after equity firm Orbis paid $15 million for a 1.9 percent stake in May 2012.