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Exhibit 99.1
SOHU.COM ACQUIRES CHINAREN.COM TO SOLIDIFY ITS LEADING POSITION
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AS MAINLAND CHINA PORTAL
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Merged Company Combines Strengths in Online Services, Community, Management
and Technology to Provide Industry Leading and Country-Specific Internet
Services in China
BEIJING AND HONG KONG, CHINA, September 14, 2000 -- SOHU.com Inc. (NASDAQ:SOHU),
one of the leading Internet portals in China, today announced the signing of a
definitive agreement to acquire ChinaRen.com, a leading Chinese community web
site. The acquisition is expected to be completed in Q4 of 2000. The merger will
create the largest Internet portal in Mainland China measured by a combined
registered user base of over 7.8 million and daily page views of 44 million.
Since both companies uniquely focus on the country-specific Internet needs of
Mainland China, today's acquisition allows SOHU.com to further strengthen its
leadership position and extend its reach as a pure Internet brand aimed
exclusively at the Chinese market. Combining SOHU.com's daily page view rate
with ChinaRen.com's popular community features provides the merged company with
the largest Internet audience in China, offering highly targetable demographic
segments, such as the affluent urban youth market.
The merger is consistent with SOHU.com's growth strategy aimed at becoming the
leading Internet portal in Mainland China. "With SOHU.com strong on
comprehensive content and search and ChinaRen.com strong on sticky community
services, the two companies naturally complement each other. Our user bases have
little overlap because SOHU.com has a mass audience while ChinaRen.com enjoys a
loyal following among the urban youth," said Charles Zhang, SOHU.com CEO. "We
are pleased to be able to join forces to further pioneer the creation of
Internet services specifically focused on Mainland China's unique needs."
Today's acquisition will allow SOHU.com to continue to play a leading role in
advocating and practicing the kind of innovative Internet concepts needed to
support the phenomenal growth in China's Internet population. SOHU.com was
founded by Charles Zhang, who returned to China in 1995 after obtaining his
Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT.) Combining his
leadership skills with the Stanford University-educated ChinaRen.com founders,
Joseph Chen, Yunfan Zhou, and Nick Yang, will allow the new organization to take
an even bigger pioneering role as the country continues to evolve. The three
founders of ChinaRen.com will enhance SOHU.com's top-notch management team while
the workforce of the two companies will be combined.
The proprietary Web technologies designed by each company will be a driving
force behind the development of new online services and products that challenge
the technical barriers that currently exist. "We plan to continue our industry
leadership through combining our strong engineering teams to develop innovative
Web technologies in-house that will specifically meet the online challenges in
China, a goal which no other Internet portal is focused on," said Joseph Chen,
ChinaRen.com CEO and co-founder. "The management of both companies returned to
China to give something back to our homeland, and we are focused on the specific
challenges and needs in Mainland China, not the impossible task of serving the
entire Asian community worldwide. With a population of over one billion,
Mainland China alone is a big enough market for us", Mr. Chen added.
"We believe that this is truly a landmark combination in the consolidation of
leading Internet companies in a very promising industry. The combination will
accelerate SOHU.com's leadership position in China Internet industry and
leverage the strengths of two of the most popular and heavily-used services on
the Internet to deliver a superior community experience to Chinese Internet
users." said Shirley Lin, managing director of Goldman Sachs (Asia) L.L.C. " We
made the investment in ChinaRen.com because we have confidence in the Internet
market potential in China and the capabilities of the management team. Now we
are excited to become a shareholder of the new SOHU.com." added Ms. Lin. Goldman
Sachs is the lead institutional investor in ChinaRen.com.
About SOHU.com
SOHU.com is one of mainland China's most recognized and established Internet
brands and indispensable to the daily life of millions of Chinese who use the
portal for their e-mail, home page, chat, messaging, news, search,
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browsing and shopping. Apart from continuous product and services development,
SOHU.com also concentrates its efforts on making the Internet ubiquitously
available, whether in the office, at home or on the road. As of this release,
page views per day have reached 26 million and registered users total 4.8
million. SOHU.com, established by Dr. Charles Zhang, one of the pioneers of the
Internet in China, is in its fourth year of operation.
About ChinaRen.com
The goal of ChinaRen.com is to build the No. 1 Youth Destination Web site for
the Chinese-speaking population. Going above and beyond simple content browsing,
ChinaRen.com provides a platform for users to engage, interact, entertain and
exchange ideas. ChinaRen.com was founded in 1999 by three Stanford classmates,
Joseph Chen, Yunfan Zhou and Nick Yang. Investors in ChinaRen.com include
Goldman Sachs, KKR and Joho Capital.
