E-House Announces Leju's Plan For Proposed IPO; Signs Agreement With Tencent

(RTTNews) - E-House (China) Holdings Limited (EJ), a real estate services company in China, announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Leju Holdings Limited, has submitted a draft registration statement on Form F-1 in compliance with the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of Leju and listing of Leju's American depositary shares representing its ordinary shares on a major stock exchange in the U.S.

The Proposed IPO is expected to commence as capital markets conditions permit and is subject to Leju's public filing of the registration statement with the SEC in compliance with the Securities Act, and the SEC declaring such registration statement effective.

The proposed number of American depositary shares to be offered and sold in the Proposed IPO has not yet been determined.

E-House said it may sell a portion of Leju's shares it owns, but expects to remain Leju's majority shareholder after the completion of the Proposed IPO.

Separately, E-House (China) Holdings said that that Leju Holdings Limited has entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with Tencent Holdings Limited, a provider of comprehensive Internet services serving the largest online community in China, including hundreds of millions of Weixin users.

Leju is a provider of real estate online services including advertising, listings and product launch information, and online-to-offline e-commerce services that facilitate real estate transactions in China.

As per the strategic cooperation agreement, Leju and Tencent have agreed to jointly develop software and tools for use on Weixin to facilitate Leju in opening batches of Weixin public accounts associated with real estate projects. Leju has agreed to adopt Weixin payment solutions as the default payment method for Real Estate O2O E-Commerce transactions conducted by Leju users on Weixin. Leju and Tencent will also explore and pursue additional opportunities for potential cooperation, including but not limited to cooperation involving Tencent's social communications platform such as Weixin, "QQ" and "mobile QQ"; the social media service, "Tencent Microblog"; the social networking service, "Qzone"; and/or other Tencent internet properties.