(Yicai Global) Dec. 8 -- Shares of Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging platform, plunged on their first day of trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange, ending 7 percent below the issue price.

Weibo [HKG: 9898] closed at HKD253.20 (USD32) per share today, below the HKD272.80 offer price, giving the Beijing-based firm a market capitalization of HKD60.1 billion (USD7.7 billion).

That was still higher than Weibo’s US stock market value, where it has been listed for the past seven years. Its Nasdaq shares [NASDAQ: WB] were worth a collective USD7.63 billion, after climbing 4.7 percent yesterday to USD33.48 apiece.

The proceeds of the Hong Kong offering will be used to continue growing Weibo’s user base and user engagement, enhance its content ecosystem, pursue strategic alliances, investments and acquisitions, improve user experience and monetization capabilities through research and development, as well as supplement working capital, it said earlier.

Weibo, which had 573 million monthly active users as of September, is China’s second-largest social media app after Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and the fourth-biggest social networking platform after WeChat, Douyin, and QQ, according to China Insights Consultancy.

Editor: Kim Taylor