BAIDU QUADRUPLES STOCK PRICE IN IPO

Chinese search engine, Baidu, opened at $27 to close at $122.54 on it's Nasdaq IPO. Thefacebook's ridiculous valuation of $81 million pre-money, MySpace for $580 million, and now Baidu's IPO. Smells like a BBQ in 1998.

UPDATE on Monday: Older article on Baidu before the IPO.

Also DFJ's ePlanet Ventures made out pretty on this IPO. They are the largest shareholders with a 28% stake. From what I heard, this made a mediocre team look good. Hey, you can strike out 3 or 4 times in a baseball game, but if you hit that home run in the final inning to win the game you come out a star.

Some more from Good Morning Silicon Valley:

Baidu -- isn't that Chinese for "irrational exuberance"?

Wow. Search outfit Baidu.com, "The Google of China," went public on Friday pulling off the the best stock debut the U.S. market has seen in more than five years. Offered at $27, Baidu shares closed at $122.54 on Friday, an astonishing 354 percent increase in value. And it seems the run's not over yet. Today Baidu shares are trading above $140. "There's an overwhelming feeling in the marketplace that this was the second coming of Google, and people felt like they had to jump on it," analyst David Menlow, president of IPOFinancial.com, told the L.A. Times. "They said to themselves, 'I could have bought Google at $85 and now it's nearly $300.' They're smacking their heads and saying, 'I could've had a V8.' " (full post)

[tags: baidu, dfj, china, search, internet, ipo]