Taomee Holdings Limited, a Shanghai-based China’s leading kids community operator filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering of its ADSs. The company plans to list on the NYSE underneath a pitch “TAOM”.
Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities are the lead underwriters on the deal.
As one of leading children’s entertainment and media companies in China(see our post from last week), Taomee’s online community owns more than 200million registered users. In addition to popular kids SNS games such as Mole’s World, and Seer, the company’s main business also includes book publishing, authority of cartoon image, film and animation, etc. Taomee plans to use proceeds from the IPO to expand its online business as well as enlarge its offline products.
According to the survey result published by iResearch in 2010, among 6 most welcomed online entertainment community by kids (5 to 15 years old), Taomee occupies 4 of them.
Chinese offerings have been grabbing headlines in the past couple of months as a number of internet ventures rushed to list in New York. We will wait and see if Taomee can be the first Chinese children-themed stocks to go public in US.