Shares of China's Xunlei soar on Nasdaq trading debut

People visit the stand of Xunlei Networking Technologies Ltd. during the China Internet Conference 2013, in Beijing, China, Aug 14, 2013. [Photo/IC]

NEW YORK - China's Xunlei Limited made its trading debut Tuesday on the NASDAQ Global Select Market and saw its shares soared on the first trading day.

Xunlei announced the pricing of its initial public offering (IPO) of 7.315 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs), each ADS representing five common shares, at an offering price of $12 per ADS, above its expected price range of $9 to $11.

Xunlei's shares, which traded under the ticker symbol "XNET," jumped 24.83 percent to close at $14.98 a share after the first trading day.

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In addition, the underwriters have been granted a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,097,250 ADSs.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Citigroup Global Markets Inc are acting as the joint book-running managers of the offering and the representatives of the underwriters. Oppenheimer & Co Inc is acting as the co-manager for this offering.

Sean Shenglong Zou, chief executive officer of Xunlei, told Xinhua in an interview Tuesday that "Xunlei is a very unique company in terms of its technological and product innovation."

Xunlei operates a powerful Internet platform in China based on cloud computing to provide users with quick and easy access to digital media content through its core products and services, Xunlei Accelerator and the cloud acceleration subscription services.

"I think Xunlei will continue to keep up with the latest development of technological innovation to enhance our cloud acceleration services and various Internet value-added services in a bid to provide better and, most importantly, almost free services to our users," Zou said.

According to the company's prospectus filed with the US Securities and Exchange Comission, Xunlei effectively provides cloud acceleration products and services to users on a range of Internet-enabled devices, including PC, television and mobile devices, to enable faster, more reliable and more efficient transmission and management of digital media content.

Tao Thomas Wu, chief financial officer of the company, said the development of Xunlei's business model over the past three years has been significant. "Now we have more than 5 million paying users, which is an impressive number in China and indicates market recognition of our company," Wu said.

Xunlei's successful IPO is also attributable to its clear growth strategy, especially an all-round strategy for terminals of mobile devices and smart living rooms, Wu noted.

Xunlei is one of the top ten largest Chinese Internet companies, with an average of approximately 300 million monthly visitors for the three months ending on March 31, according to the China-based consultancy iResearch.