Chinese search-engine Sogou's IPO priced at $13 raising $585 million

China’s second-largest search engine, Sogou Inc, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “SOGO” on Thursday.

After pricing at the top of the range at 13 dollars per share, the company raised 585 million dollars. Sogou then hovered around 13.50 dollars for most of its first day of trading, closing the day at 13.51 dollars, up about 4 percent.

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings, a major Sogou shareholder, uses Sogou Search as the default search engine in its Mobile QQ browser and qq.com site.

Sogou is a unit of China’s Sohu.com Inc, an Internet service company that includes search and gaming platforms and remains as Sogou’s controlling shareholder after the IPO.

Proceeds from the offering will be used for research and development and marketing purposes, Sogou said in its IPO filing.

Beijing-based Sogou, which competes with Baidu and Alibaba’s UCWeb, reported net income of 66.7 million dollars for the nine months ended Sept. 30, compared with 45.4 million dollars for the same period a year earlier.

JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and CICC were among top underwriters to the offering.

Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan said, he hopes a US IPO will help with hiring and make it easier to collaborate with US tech companies, calling the IPO a “milestone”.

(REUTERS)