Yet another Chinese company has filed for a public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. One of China’s top three job listing websites, Zhaopin, is just the latest in a number of Chinese companies who are hoping to hold US Initial Public Offerings (IPO) later this year, following Alibaba, the country’s largest e‑commerce business and their nearest competitor, JD.com, as well as Sina Weibo, a micro-blogging site.
Zhaopin, a bi-lingual job board, was set up in 1994 and as of last year the site had 74 million registered users and listed more than 10.5 million job vacancies initiated by 250,000 unique users. At the end of its financial year in June 2013, it recorded $147 million in revenue, with the majority coming from its online recruitment company. It is one of the three most successful jobsites in China, with its closest rivals being 51job and ChinaHR. With its application for a US IPO, it hopes to raise close to $100 million.
Competition driving the US direction
It is believed that Zhaopin are making the move into US stock markets because of the intense competition they are facing at home. For example, the professional networking site, LinkedIn, has entered the Chinese market as recently as February, having experienced a great deal of interest from Chinese citizens in the ten years it has been operational. Despite LinkedIn being an English-language site, it has more than four million registered users from China, spanning 80,000 independent companies. Thanks to China’s huge population, LinkedIn is hoping to tap into its potential market of over 140 million Chinese business professionals.
Zhaopin also have other up-and-coming domestic competition, as China has also seen other recruiting companies enjoy success by targeting their services at specific workforce sectors, such as Neitui which lists jobs in IT and technology, Liepin, targeting executives and RedRen Headhunting which features a crowdsourcing recruiting app.
Chinese stocks back in the game
This proves that there is new shift towards investors putting their money into Chinese stocks on US exchanges. Previously, investors had been shying away from Chinese stocks amidst accusations during 2012 by financial regulators of improper accounting having taken place.