Daily Deals Site Lashou All Set to Hit NASDAQ as LASO, Raise $80 Million

Lashou, one of China’s largest group-buy sites, is now on the verge of its US IPO, having filed with American regulators. The Beijing-based company, which started-up in 2009, will hit NASDAQ stickers soon with the symbol LASO.

Nearly 5.4 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) will be issued at a price range of US$13 to $15. That could raise Lashou as much as $80 million. At its median stock price, the site would be valued at $358 million. The IPO is being underwritten by Barclays Capital, Jefferies, and CICC HK Securities. Check out the SEC filing here

Lashou will reportedly use some of the money raised to build a call centre for customer support – the kind of huge outlay that no other firm in this cash-strapped sector can afford. There are rumors circulating in the industry that Lashou might actually be bracing to pivot into a more conventional B2C e-commerce site, along the lines of 360Buy or Dangdang (NYSE:DANG). Doing so would put it into a sector with higher profit margins than the daily deals market; but, with the company being in a pre-IPO quiet period, it’s impossible to elicit any information on this.

Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN), which operates in China as Gaopeng, became the first group-buy site to IPO when it did so last week. Lashou will be the first Chinese one to list.

Interestingly, Lashou will be the first major Chinese IPO overseas since the new VIE regulations were revealed (which is a proxy ownership structure needed by foreign investors in Chinese companies). It might cause unease around the world, with investors unsure how the new VIE rules safeguard what shareholders own.