Remember VIPShop (NYSE:VIPS), the Chinese flash e-commerce sales site that’s the only company from China to list fully in the US this whole year? After an initial rough ride right after its IPO debut at $6.50 per share in March, it’s now having a superb week and closed yesterday at $8.00, giving it a market cap of $404.55 million.
Chinese media have been having a field day with that latter stat, highlighting that it takes VIPShop higher in value than the Amazon-esque e-commerce site Dangdang (NYSE:DANG), which was the first Chinese B2C e-tailer to go public in the US. VIPShop is supposedly a much smaller and more specialist affair than Dangdang as it focuses just on limited-time bargain prices for fashion items.
In fact, its specialization could be what’s attracting investors, as its very particular niche – where its up again local rivals like FClub, which recently raised $30 million in funding – is a safer bet than China’s wider e-commerce scene. Indeed, with price wars on books and electronics causing turmoil among other sites such as Tmall, 360Buy, and Amazon China, the fashion sector looks like a more stable and desirable market.
Nonetheless, VIPShop has issued a slightly gloomy guidance for its upcoming 2012 Q3 results, saying that it anticipates net revenues of $145 million to $150 million – a tad short of analysts’ expectations of $155 million.
2012 has been a frosty year for Chinese stocks overseas after the Longtop fraud scandal of 2011. VIPShop is the only one to have made a full listing in the US this year – aside from gaming platform CMGE listing ‘by way of introduction’ on NASDAQ last month.
[Source: QQ Tech - article in Chinese]
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