One of Outblaze’s major investors, China Rich Holdings, has told the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that a large U.S. company has put in a proposal to buy all of the Hong Kong Internet company’s issued shares for US$200 million, according to a South China Morning Post report.
An official at Outblaze however countered this claim by saying that the company’s shareholders were not considering “complete buyouts” of the Outblaze.
However, an executive at China Rich, which owns 28 percent of Outblaze, indicated that the Outblaze official was ill informed.
A spokesperson from Pacific CyberWorks, which has a 20 percent stake in Outblaze, told the Post that she had no knowledge of the deal.
Hikari Tsushin, another investor and a Japanese mobile teleco, holds 10 percent of Outblaze. The $200 million buyout would be 400 percent more than the $45 million valuation indicated by Hikari’s purchase of shares in October
Outblaze provides instant portal services to websites such as web-based e-mail, chat, message boards and mailing lists. In return, the company gets advertising space from its clients who become members of its network. Outblaze reportedly has more than 7,000 sites as members with more than 1.5 million active users.
