Waiting for Wowo: the IPO tragicomedy continues

Chinese ecommerce and daily deals site Wowo (known in Chinese as 55tuan) is not having a good time. I wrote about the company’s bumpy road to a US IPO a couple of days ago, and since then things have only gotten bumpier. As I predicted might happen, Wowo missed its April 1 IPO date. Then executives promised the company would list on April 3, but that day came and went without an IPO too. Wowo now claims it will list on April 7.

Wowo has told reporters that these recent delays were just minor issues. The April 1 IPO was pushed back so that Wowo executives could get to New York to ring the bell at the NASDAQ. Then the April 3 listing had to be postponed due to a technical malfunction. Since the stock markets are closed on Monday in the United States as part of the Easter holiday, Tuesday April 7 is the soonest possible day that Wowo can list.

But investors must surely be wondering at this point whether the company really intends to list at all. An IPO that was originally scheduled for early February has been pushed back and pushed back again so many times that it’s beginning to seem like fiction. Some of the Wowo employees are certainly feeling that way. China Entrepreneur reports overhearing someone at Wowo headquarters say about the IPO: “Godot isn’t coming today, he must be coming tomorrow.” It’s a famous line from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a play in which two men wait for a third man named Godot who – spoiler alert – never arrives.

Becket called his play a tragicomedy, and Wowo’s IPO is starting to feel that way as well. Given the suspicions that part of the reason for the delay is that Wowo has to iron out a new agreement with its domestic shareholders (the previous agreement stipulated the IPO had to occur before April), the delay to April 7 might seem like a good thing. But coincidentally China is also celebrating a holiday – Tomb-sweeping Day – from the 4th to the 6th so any new negotiations will have to be swift to be prepared in time for April 7.

So will April 7 finally be the day Wowo really lists? I have no idea, but after two months of poorly-explained delays I certainly wouldn’t put any money on it.