NBCUniversal continues to ramp up international streaming deals as a way of getting its content in a non-pirated (read: revenue-generating) format out to the masses. Today, the media company is making a key move into China in a multi-year licensing deal with Youku, the country’s biggest online video player with 300 million monthly viewers, to provide a rolling selection of 100 feature films as… → Read More
The online video market in China is a fragmented scene led by national businesses where companies like YouTube don’t even get a look in; but today sees that market move one step closer to consolidation, with the news that the two largest video portals, Youku and Tudou, will be merging in an all-stock deal, to take control of nearly half the online video market in the country.
The merger caps… → Read More
Boutique tech investment bank Pacific Crest Securities has purchased Pacific Epoch, a Shanghai-based investment research firm specializing in technology. This gives Pacific Crest fifty more bodies on the ground in China to deliver investors better investment research than “This is the (fill-in-the-blank-Western-Internet-company) of China.”
That lazy marketing strategy has helped companies like … → Read More
A few weeks ago we flagged a growing trend of Chinese Internet companies going public on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange and getting pretty good valuations. At the time I was surprised more people weren’t paying attention– especially given how few Internet IPOs we’re having in the US and how much of the returns from those Chinese deals were flowing back to Silicon Valley. (At least on… → Read More
Shares of Chinese video site Youku soared on its IPO today, closing at $33.44, which is 160 percent above its offering price of $12.80. Since Youku’s 15.8 million shares of American Depository Receipts (ADRs) represent 16 percent of the total shares, the closing price gives Beijing-based $Youku a market cap of roughly $3.3 billion. In other words, it is worth more than $AOL (owner of… → Read More
The Internet IPO is back—if you are a Chinese Internet company. Youku, the YouTube of China, saw its shares pop more than 100 percent in its IPO today. Shares were priced at $12.80, but they are currently trading at $27.60.. That is a 116 percent jump.
According to its SEC filing, the company lost $25 million on total revenues of $35 million for the first nine months of 2010. The company… → Read More
Bill Bishop, an investor and consultant based in Beijing, joined me via Skype to talk about this white-hot Chinese Interent IPO market, that’s even welcoming unprofitable companies into the Nasdaq. “It’s been a crazy couple months, and it looks like it will be crazier through Christmas,” he says. “The goldrush is back.”
One of the most interesting corners of that goldrush is online video. Between… → Read More
Yes, China is taking over the world. Or at least the Internet. No, this is not like the WE’LL-ALL-BE-WORKING-FOR-JAPAN-oh-nevermind scare of the 1980s. Why? Because China has more than 1 billion people. It already represents the largest online audience in the world and is less than 30% penetrated and has Internet spending per capita that’s less than one-third of the United States.
That means two… → Read More
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