NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- After the all-stock merger between Youku(YOKU_) andTudou(TUDO_) a couple of weeks ago, Youku's stock has receded from the $32 levels it hit the day of the deal announcement.
The stock is now back down at the $24 level -- and actually less than where it traded before the deal was publicized.
Read the full post in TheStreet
Here's my appearance from earlier today on Bloomberg TV's Money Moves with Trish Regan:
[Long YHOO, AAPL, and YOKU]
Baidu may put Tudou out of its IPO misery, by acquiring the firm and rolling it into its Qiyi service.
Who will be the winner of the "Winner-Take-All" strategy in China's Internet Space?
Read the full post in the WSJ China.
By Eric Jackson And even though Tudou was No. 2 in the market, it was close enough to Youku that many investors thought it was basically a dead heat between the two currently (different numbers have been bandied about, but it basically looks like Youku has 20% of the market while Tudou has 16%). Few observers expected the type of successful IPO Youku received when it finally went public in December. The stock was immediately a hit and tripled its offer price. Critics quickly sputtered that investors were being irrational. One person called it the most overvalued stock in the universe. While Youku has been highly volatile for the last month since its IPO, the price has held up - the stock is currently trading in the midrange of its public trading price (since its IPO). Partly, it has been supported by the recent news that Youku has struck a deal to stream the Hollywood movie Inception over its service to subscribers. This deal fed into some observers who have said that both Tudou and Youku are more likely to become the future "Netflix (NFLX - commentary - Trade Now) of China" rather than another YouTube. With Netflix moving to focus more on streaming movies to its customers rather than mailing DVDs, you can see how the Inception deal would get people excited.
RealMoney Contributor
1/14/2011 7:49 AM EST
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Whatever happened to Tudou? The "YouTube of China" filed an initial public offering (IPO) and applied to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol TUDO in the U.S. in early November. This was a week before its rival Youku (YOKU - commentary - Trade Now) did. Yet, we haven't heard from Tudou since. What's going on?
Initially, when both Tudou and Youku filed their prospectuses to do an IPO, many Western investors were wondering if Tudou wouldn't be the more successful of the two issues. Even though Tudou is No. 2 to Youku in market share currently, its reported numbers reveal that, unlike Youku, Tudou has been profitable in 2010. Tudou's offering will be led by Credit Suisse, which is very widely respected for its tech deals in China (although Youku was able to nab Goldman Sachs as its lead underwriter).
By Eric Jackson Dangdang ended its first day of trading up 87%. Youku ended up 161% for the day. It feels like 1999 all over again. However, any time you see moves like that, you will get the chorus of worriers. "These price-to-sales ratios are crazy!" is one comment I heard during yesterday's market action. "This is going to end in tears!" One more: "I'm going to short the hell out of these two stocks." I wrote about Youku being the monster China IPO two weeks ago, though I'm not some Pollyanna cheerleader. Still, even I was surprised by the giant move the stock made yesterday. The critics of Youku point out that the company has raised more than $100 million from venture capitalists to date, and that it has yet to turn a profit. In fact, Youku's losses have only grown along with the company itself. It has faced increasing costs of acquiring proprietary content (think Hulu), keeping up with intense competition, paying for more servers to stream video and large pirating risks. Even if the company can supplement its advertising-based revenue with subscription revenue, critics wonder how will it will convince the Chinese to pay for content when bootleg DVDs can be bought for pennies on the street. Yet, what Youku has going for it -- as I've said before -- is that it's the leader in the online video space at the moment. China's No. 2 online-video company, Tudou, filed to go public first, but Youku is actually the first one out. If it didn't have name recognition in the U.S. before yesterday, it does now. That will be important for Youku's continued access to the capital markets in order to fund its growth -- assuming its price holds up.
RealMoney Contributor
12/9/2010 11:30 AM EST
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Wednesday's price action in the new Chinese initial public offerings in Youku (YOKU -commentary - Trade Now) and Dangdang (DANG- commentary - Trade Now) was eye-popping. Americans love easy comparisons to for understanding foreign businesses, so we've heard endlessly heard that Youku and Dangdang are China's YouTube and Amazon (AMZN -commentary - Trade Now), respectively.
By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor
We have seen a barrage of new F-1 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the last couple of weeks for new Chinese-based IPOs which should hit our shores within the next month.
On Monday in RealMoney , I discussed a recent oneBitauto(BITA_), which went public last week and is still clinging to its offer price. That stock is positioning itself as the leader of automotive information on the Web in China.
By Eric Jackson Youku is still private. Tudou will be the first of these two giants to test the public markets. There are smaller video sites like Ku6.com or Ku6 Media (KUTV), which is owned by Shanda Interactive (SNDA - commentary - Trade Now), but Shanda is a much smaller player and has only a $150 million market capitalization. In case you didn't know, neither YouTube nor Hulu is available in China because of the Great Firewall. Therefore, China's hometown video sites have a greenfield market to capture for themselves. Tudou is seeking to raise $120 million in the IPO, with Credit Suisse (CS - commentary - Trade Now) and Deutsche Bank (DB - commentary - Trade Now) acting as lead underwriters on the deal. Some of the early Tudou investors who will get some of their money back -- after pouring in $135 million -- include IDG China, GGV Capital and Temasek Holdings, the state investment company for Singapore. What Tudou has going for it in spades is growth. It has over 70 million registered users in a country where 400 million of the population actively uses the Internet today. Tudou only had 16 million users in 2007. As its users have grown, so have its revenues. Tudou has generated $33.8 million in revenue in the first nine months of this year, a 230% increase over the same period a year ago.
RealMoney Contributor
11/12/2010 7:45 AM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
Earlier this week, a company that could be behind the next great Chinese Internet stock filed its F-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Tudou (its ticker post-IPO will be TUDO). You will want to watch it.
Tudou is one of the companies that are vying to be China's YouTube. Unlike here in the U.S., several companies in China are competing for that moniker. Tudou is currently No. 2 in China for market share in the video-sharing space, with 16% market share. It trails Youku, which has 20% of the market share in China.Growth in All Directions
