中国日报专访莫天全：解读搜房网八年成功秘诀-站长中国-中国站长门户从这里开始全面了解中国站长

中国日报专访莫天全：解读搜房网八年成功秘诀

　 2008年01月14日21:21:28　评论(0条) 字体:[大中小]
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英文原稿：

A host of real estate companies are waiting to publicly list this year, but SouFun, China's largest real estate and home furnishing website, is unique as the only property website set for an initial public offering (IPO).

Established in 1999, SouFun- Mandarin for "house search" - provides information, advertising and listing services to China's growing online real estate and home furnishing and improvement sectors.

In late August of 2006, Telstra Corp Ltd, Australia's largest telecommunications and information services company, sealed a $254 million deal to acquire 51 per cent of SouFun Holdings Ltd.

In anticipation of SouFun's planned listing, China Business Weekly reporters Hu Yuanyuan and Bi Xiaoning have an exclusive interview with Vincent Mo, SouFun founder and CEO:

Q: After eight years of rapid development, you say SouFun is well prepared for an IPO this year. Where do you prefer the company to list?

A: I really like to see SouFun listing when SouFun's shareholders think it is the best time to do so. We like to list SouFun in mainland markets as SouFun is one of the top internet companies and we would like to keep SouFun inside mainland China. However, as the industry regulator hasn't yet given detailed rules on overseas companies' listing in China's mainland, it seems we may have to look at other markets when we plan for the listing.

Meanwhile, we will also keep the door open for other potential strategic investors as long as it could do good to our shareholders

Q: What do you plan to do with the money you raise from the capital market?

A: We would like the new capital to fuel our expansion into 100 cities, a plan that we made four years ago. By the end of 2007, we had entered 75 cities, and we are expected to finish the plan in 2008. So we need more money to quicken the expansion and strengthen our foothold in cities where we're already present.

We are also looking at potential acquisitions. To date, SouFun has largely relied on organic growth, except for four M&A deals in 1999. The money will also be used to expand our product lines.

Q: We see that your business income exceeded 500 million yuan by the end of 2007 and maintained an average annual growth of more than 100 percent in the past three years. Is such a rapid growth sustainable?

A: I believe so. And I am confident that we can maintain growth of over 100 percent in profit in the coming three to five years.

Internet advertisement is at such an early stage now and only accounts for about five percent of the total advertising in the real estate industry. We expect the proportion to increase to 10 percent in the next three years, meaning we still have much growth potential.

As our geographical expansion moves on, we can count on more profit coming from that. It only takes an average of one and a half years to reach the break-even point in a new city.

The biggest challenge, I think, mainly lies with localization as the real estate industry is such a local industry.

Q: Statistics show that over 90 percent of your business income is derived from advertising. Do you have any plan to diversify your portfolio and find new profit points?

A: Yes. SouFun is very much an advertisement model. We are trying to diversify our risks by adding more platforms and expanding into more cities.

Currently, we are centered on everything home related. Our product lines consist of new homes, pre-owned homes, furniture and decoration, and a real estate research center. Our next step is to deliver more value-added services, such as research and development, mortgages, appraisals, home insurance and community services.

Q: SouFun started an English-language section on its website last year. How's the business going? Are you going to strengthen your business in overseas markets?

A: The business goes on well, with around four million unique IP addresses visiting our international channel every day. Among SouFun's overall visitors, 3 to 4 percent come from overseas.

The English version is only the starting point. Already in the pipeline is development of Japanese and Korean sites, followed by Russian and French versions.

Hopefully, we are going to expand our services to overseas this year, with primary choices in East and South Asia. We already have a website in Hong Kong in its early stages.

Q: Does SouFun have any role models?

A: I have read many times the prospectus of Homestore, an American heavyweight in Internet real estate information, advertising products and services. I learned a lot from Homestore, mainly its framework and M&A mode.

Six years ago, many Internet companies copied the model of Homestore but most failed. Our experience is that we must learn from the excellent but can't copy blindly. At that time, 90 percent of the houses in China were new houses, while 80 percent in America were pre-owned homes. We recognized the difference and adjusted measures to local conditions. In this way we survived. Besides, we signed a deal with Internet portals Sina Corp and Sohu.com on outsourcing their real estate channels, which enabled us to grow very rapidly at the initial stage and strengthen our foothold.

Q: Some industry experts say China's property market is tightening. How would that influence SouFun?

A: We would like to see a more reasonable growth rate of property prices this year, but I don't think they will see a big fall in Beijing due to still-rigid demand. But for those cities that underwent dramatic growth in the past few years, such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou, an adjustment is expected. In such a big country, degrees of fluctuation will vary in different cities and regions.

Generally speaking, such adjustments have little influence on SouFun's development. Sometimes, it could be even good news for us as property developers may increase investment in ads.

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