This week will see one of the year's most anticipated IPOs as Renren, China's largest "real name" social network with 117 million users, goes public. As the first of the world's major social networks to attempt an IPO, it is poised to benefit from significant investor enthusiasm surrounding social networking. Additionally, following strong debuts by other recent Chinese internet IPOs like Youku.com (+366%) and Qihoo 360 (+95%), investors are clearly excited by the secular story of China's increasing internet penetration and the country's rapid forecasted online advertising growth. After raising its anticipated price range to $12-$14 from $9-$11 in a sign of strong demand, Renren now seeks to raise $690 million and will also receive a concurrent $110 million investment from Chinese internet company Alibaba and investment firms China Media Capital and CITIC. Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse are the bookrunners on the offering, which is on this week's IPO calendar. The stock is expected to price Tuesday and begin trading on the NYSE under the ticker "RENN" on Wednesday.
Renren was launched in 2005 by a US-educated Chinese entrepreneur as a site where college students could connect and communicate and has since followed a similar evolution to Facebook's, broadening its user base to include high school students and young professionals. It has also gradually increased the stickiness of its site by introducing online games, streaming music and other features and opening the platform to third-party apps, which now number 1,700. These efforts have helped Renren increase its registered user base from 33 million at the end of 2008 to 117 million today; over the same period, its active users have grown from 17 million to 31 million.
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