China's travel booking service, Qunar, aired publicly on NASDAQ earlier today. On its first day of trade, Qunar's shares have doubled. The initial public offering that started out by USD15 per piece had surged to USD34.99. In total, the travel booking service raised USD167 million in IPO.
Qunar, which translates to "where to go" in Chinese, is controlled and owned by China's largest search engine, Baidu. In 2011, Baidu had bought a major stock in Qunar and now holds 55% of it.
During the first six months of 2013, Qunar gathered in USD58.5 million sales, but suffered a net loss of USD2.8 million. Currently, Qunar has 40 million mobile users and 203 million Web users. The mobile app of Qunar has been downloaded over 100 million times and counting.
Qunar rose above the market range and had raised USD187 million in initial public offerings yesterday. Morgan Stanley estimated that mobile internet market in China would triple to USD30 billion in 2015.
Presently, China's Qunar is priced at USD11.8 billion dollars.
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