Youku Narrows loss for the first quarter after IPO

Beijing-Chinese leaders Youku video sharing website reported a narrower loss for the fourth quarter of 2010 on Tuesday, less than three months since its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange was the strongest debut in the United States share in five years. Shares in the company office in Beijing opened at $ 12.80 on 8 December and quickly more than tripled in value. On Tuesday, shares closed at $ 39.96, 3.92% down on the day and in the upper half of their trading range of $ 25,57-$ 50 from the IPO.The company, led by educated U.S. Chinese Victor Koo, recorded a net loss in the fourth quarter of 37.7 million yuan (US $ 5.7 million), or 13 cents per American depositary share, compared with the largest loss of 46 million yuan, or approximately 33 cents per share, a year ago.Calling itself a online television company, Youku almost 203 million dollars in its IPO, but has yet to turn a profit as the cost of bandwidth to House his enormous collection of online offerings is expensive in China, where the population online is the largest at 457 million still the bandwidth is controlled by the State.In January, Youku license the action thriller Inception by Warner Bros. steam free of advertising and on-demand to pay all Chinese Web surfers for five yuan (75 cents) for each view. The company has not disclosed the number of paying subscribers to this service Youku Premium due to a regulatory grey perpetuated by media Monitors in single-party Government of China, it is not clear whether Youku and its main competitor in the online video space, Tudou – providing an IPO – will never get profits from gaining control of all their content.To avoid a repetition of past legal action over pirated videos and keep authorities happy, each company employs an army of in-house censors to delete anything that might draw heat from the copyright holders or offend the censors was touching on politically sensitive topics such as civil unrest, government corruption, sex or religion.Youku revenue in its first quarter as a publicly traded company has more than doubled from October to December, reaching EUR 152.5 million yuan on the strength of advertising sales, strengthened by a gain in traffic and an expansion of its video library. The company forecast revenue from Jan-Mar would more than double a year ago and said its financial results would improve in the mid-to long-term costs shrink as a band.