Friday, May 03, 2013

Alibaba Group buys stake in Weibo


News this week: China’s largest e-commerce company, the Alibaba Group, has acquired an 18% interest in Weibo, Sina’s microblogging service. Alibaba will pay US$586 million for the stake, valuing Weibo at more than US$3.2 billion.

According to the two companies, the deal will help Weibo to generate US$380 million in advertising and social commerce services revenue over the next three years. Currently, there are reportedly more than 500 million registered users on Weibo with close to 50 million active users. Alibaba expects the deal will help drive traffic from Weibo to its e-commerce sites.

Under the agreement, Alibaba will have the right to increase its ownership in Weibo to 30% at a mutually agreed valuation “within a certain period of time in the future”, however, no further details were provided.

This post is excerpted from BSG's weekly e-newsletter which is part of our subscription research service, BSG Tracker. Visit our website to find out more about this service. You can also follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates.

1 comment:

Business Tracking System said...

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