Remember China’s only US IPO of 2012? It’s doing rather well right now

Remember VIPShop (NYSE:VIPS), the Chinese flash eCommerce sales site that’s the only company from China to list fully in the US this whole year? After an initial rough ride right after its IPO debut at $6.50 per share in March, it’s now having a superb week and closed yesterday at $8.00, giving it a market cap of $404.55 million.

Chinese media have been having a field day with that latter stat, highlighting that it takes VIPShop higher in value than the Amazon-esque eCommerce site Dangdang (NYSE:DANG), which was the first Chinese B2C e-tailer to go public in the US. VIPShop is supposedly a much smaller and more specialist affair than Dangdang as it focuses just on limited-time bargain prices for fashion items.

In fact, its specialisation could be what’s attracting investors, as its very particular niche – where its up again local rivals like FClub, which recently raised $30 million in funding – is a safer bet than China’s wider eCommerce scene. Indeed, with price wars on books and electronics causing turmoil among other sites such as Tmall, 360Buy, and Amazon China, the fashion sector looks like a more stable and desirable market.

Nonetheless, VIPShop has issued a slightly gloomy guidance for its upcoming 2012 Q3 results, saying that it anticipates net revenues of $145 million to $150 million – a tad short of analysts’ expectations of $155 million.

2012 has been a frosty year for Chinese stocks overseas after the Longtop fraud scandal of 2011. VIPShop is the only one to have made a full listing in the US this year – aside from gaming platform CMGE listing ‘by way of introduction’ on NASDAQ last month.

[Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese]

This article by Steven Millward originally appeared on Tech in Asia and was published with permission.