FOIA Confidential Treatment Requested by Weibo Corporation

 

WEIBO CORPORATION

8/F, QIHAO Plaza, No. 8 Xinyuan S. Road

Chaoyang District, Beijing 100027

People’s Republic of China

 

FOIA CONFIDENTIAL TREATMENT REQUEST PURSUANT TO 17 C.F.R. § 200.83 BY WEIBO CORPORATION

 

The entity requesting confidential treatment is

 

Weibo Corporation

8/F, QIHAO Plaza, No. 8 Xinyuan S. Road

Chaoyang District, Beijing 100027

People’s Republic of China
+86 10 8262 8888

 

November 8, 2019

 

VIA EDGAR

 

Joyce Sweeney, Staff Accountant

Division of Corporation Finance

Office of Information Technologies and Services

Securities and Exchange Commission

100 F Street, N.E.

Washington, D.C. 20549

 

Re:

Weibo Corporation (the “Company”)

 

 

Form 20-F for Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2018

 

 

Filed on April 29, 2019

 

 

File No. 001-36397

 

 

Dear Ms. Sweeney:

 

This letter sets forth the Company’s supplemental responses to comment No. 1 contained in the letter dated October 1, 2019 from the staff (the “Staff”) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) regarding the Company’s Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2018 (the “2018 Form 20-F”). All capitalized terms used but not defined in this letter shall have the meaning ascribed to such terms in the 2018 Form 20-F.

 

Due to the commercially sensitive nature of the information contained herein, the Company respectfully requests that, in accordance with Rule 83 of the Commission’s Rules on Information and Requests, 17 C.F.R. § 200.83, the information contained in this letter be treated as confidential information and not be disclosed pursuant to any request under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. § 522) (“FOIA”).

 

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In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company supplementally furnishes the following metrics to facilitate the Staff’s review.

 

 

 

2016

 

2017

 

2018

 

Total advertiser number

 

2,518,827

 

2,554,586

 

2,937,134

 

Average spending per advertiser excluding Alibaba (in US$)

 

204

 

357

 

470

 

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*** FOIA Confidential Treatment Requested Pursuant to 17 C.F.R. § 200.83 by Weibo Corporation

 

The Company respectfully advises the Staff that quantitatively disclosing either the total advertiser number or the average spending per advertiser on an annual basis should provide investors sufficient material information to evaluate the Company’s advertising business, and same approach has been adopted by peer issuers in their discussion of advertising business.  As explained in the Company’s earlier responses, although the Company tracks these metrics related to key accounts and SME customers internally, further bifurcating and disclosing the total number of advertisers and average spending per advertiser based on these two categories will not provide the investors with meaningful insights on the Company’s results of operations for two reasons: (a) few other peer issuers disclose comparable metrics in this level of granularity, and voluntary disclosure of this information may put the Company at competitive disadvantage; and (b) each peer issuer adopts different methodology in defining and categorizing their advertising related metrics, and voluntary disclosure of this information would not provide meaningful information to the investors for benchmarking purposes.

 


***Redacted Pursuant to FOIA Confidential Treatment Request***

 

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If you have any additional questions or comments regarding the 2018 Form 20-F, please contact the undersigned at +86 10 8262 8888.

 

 

Very truly yours,

 

 

 

/s/ Gaofei Wang

 

Gaofei Wang

 

Chief Executive Officer

 

cc:                                Z. Julie Gao, Esq., Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Amanda Zhang, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers Zhong Tian LLP

 

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Schedule A

 

FOIA Confidential Treatment Requested Pursuant to 17 C.F.R. § 200.83 by Weibo Corporation for Schedule A.

 

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