Sources have said that Sina, the internet platform from China has picked a handful of banks for its spinoff of its micro-blogging, Twitter like service known as Weibo. This is the latest of a number of deals that have been high-profile taking place in the tech sector.
The company hired Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs to be in charge of its listing in New York, according to people familiar with the situation.
Sina is attempting to raise over $500 million in the IPO, which they expect will take place during the second quarter of 2014. Last year, the dominant e-commerce platform in China Alibaba paid more than $586 million for a stake of 18% in Weibo, which valued the company at more than $3.3 billion.
Barclay’s analysts said that Weibo by itself is worth approximately $4.1 billion, but JPMorgan placed its value at $5 billion.
Sina will be reporting its earnings for the fourth quarter following the close of Wall Street on Monday. Internet stocks have done well for investors looking to build exposure of China over the last year. Tencent, which has a messaging system similar to WhatsApp called WeChat has had its shares go up by more than double over the last year.
One analyst said that even with the automatic reactions by the Chinese markets that the resumption of the IPO is positive over the long-term.
Investors are eager to see if Alibaba is going to push forward with its listing. Both Hong Kong and New York are trying to host the listing, which likely will value the company at close to $100 billion.
Tech sector activity has roared to start this year, which has provided a big boost to global equity markets. Following the $19 billion purchase by Facebook for WhatsApp last week the total value of the tech deals thus far is $50 billion, which makes it the busiest beginning to a year in 14 years, which was at the height of the bubble of the dotcom era.
