International Data Group (IDG), a private US-based media company, has continued its strong run of corporate venturing activity with a successful flotation in New York and an investment in TuneUp Media.
China-based real estate advertising company SouFun saw a 72.9% rise in its share price in its first day of trading on the New York stock exchange. SouFun’s American depository shares (ADS), each of which represents four ordinary shares, listed at $42.50 each on September 17 and closed that day at $73.50.
IDG and its China-based joint venture with venture capital firm Accel Partners sold 3.44 million ordinary shares, 4.3% of SouFun, to reap $36.55m and retained 8.3% of the Chinese company, according to its regulatory filing.
IDG had initially invested in SouFun in 1996 and in March transferred 5.6 million of its shares held in its IDG Technology subsidiary, to its joint venture IDG-Accel China Capital and IDG-Accel China Capital Investors where the majority of the money is drawn from third parties.
The listing was IDG Capital Partners’, the group’s China-based corporate venturing team, fourth initial public offering (IPO) this year: China Kanghui started trading in New York last month, Andon Health listed on China’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange in June and China Lodging Group floated in March on Nasdaq in the US.
SouFun raised $10.5m in its IPO through selling 246,914 ADSs while its majority shareholder, Australia-based telecoms company Telstra, sold 1.8 million ADSs.
Telstra purchased its stake in SouFun in 2006 for $254m and last month agreed to sell its shares to private equity firms General Atlantic and Apax Partners for just more than $300m. General Atlantic and Apax both agreed to pay Telstra $163m for equal 19% stakes in SouFun at its IPO price.
SouFun sells real estate-related marketing and listing services in 106 Chinese cities with net income attributable to shareholders of $5.3m on total revenue of $68.2m in the six months ended June 30, according to its prospectus.
Separately, IDG has also invested as part of a venture consortium backing TuneUp Media, a US-based application for technology company Apple’s iTunes online music store.
TuneUp raised $4.3m in a series C round led by IDG Ventures, the media company’s US-based corporate venturing division, with participation from its original seed-funder, KPG Ventures. KPG had previously invested about $2.2m in TuneUp in the 12 months since its launch in 2007, according to news provider VentureWire.
TuneUp has more than 1.5 million registered users internationally and its product, Automagically, has cleaned over 1.2 billion mislabeled music tracks.
Phil Sanderson, managing director of IDG Ventures in San Francisco, said: "TuneUp goes beyond simply cleaning up a music library; it provides a unique service for users to access the information they want about their favourite artists and songs directly within their music player."