China based security software marker, Qihoo 360, is going for a $200 million U.S initial public offering. Qihoo 360 plans to use the fund for research and development and acquisition of technologies, according to Reuters.
What’s most interesting about Qihoo 360 is its robust revenue growth. The company saw revenue grew by 78.5 percent to $57.7 million in 2010. Net income for that year was at $8.5 million. Bloomberg also reported that Qihoo 360 had a strong user base of 301 million monthly active users as of January. That is almost half of what Facebook currently has.
The strong report on its user base was about 2 months from a dispute between Tencent and Qihoo. Last year, Tencent introduced QQ Doctor by bundling it with its QQ service. With a total of 600 million QQ users, Tencent captured about 40% of Chinese market overnight. That caused Qihoo 360 to lose a chunk of users. A series of dispute followed suit but Qihoo 360 managed keep user base strong.
In January, Zhou Hongyi, CEO of Qihoo 360 was named the “new economic figure” for the next ten years by China Daily. Zhou started his entrepreneur journey in 1998 when he founded 3721, a search engine which was acquired by Yahoo in 2003. Zhou also became the CEO of Yahoo China. It was only in 2006 when he invested and served QiHoo as its Chairman.
The future seems bright for Qihoo 360. With impressive statistics, I’m sure Qihoo 360 would be a stock to watch for many U.S investors.
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