BEIJING, April 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SouFun Holdings
Limited (NYSE: SFUN, "SouFun"), the leading real estate and home
related product and services Internet portal in China, responded to a short seller's report
today:
A short seller (Glaucus Research Group: "We are short seller. We
are biased.") published a report yesterday on SouFun. We think
their conclusions are misleading. Here are our comments with
respect to the report's 7 summaries:
- Our Chairman's family formed a not-for-profit corporation
called Research Center on Natural Conservation (Research Center) to
purchase the Arden House, a former Columbia University Executive
Programs training center. Our Chairman's family (not SouFun) paid
full for the purchase. The Research Center did use SouFun's
New York office address to receive
corresponding letters before the completion of the purchase (and
some corresponding letters may still coming to SouFun's
New York office address as the
change of address may take longer). Our Chairman (also a director
of the Research Center) occasionally invites SouFun's visiting
employees and clients to use the Arden House for free. SouFun's
New York office contact on the
website of Arden House is to answer any question from SouFun's
visiting employees and clients.
- SouFun purchased 72 Wall Street for its long term strategy of
SouFun's internal global training programs collectively called
SouFun Business School. The facility needs renovation and is now
not in a condition for full operations. The company has been using
it as a temporary office and occasionally for visiting SouFun
employees and clients (62 visitors in 2011, 241 visitors in 2012,
and planning for 350 visitors in 2013). It is preliminarily planned
to open in full in two years from today. SouFun's visiting
employees and clients for training purposes are mostly arranged by
a related party called Wall Street Global Training Center (a not
for profit organization in application), of which our Chairman is a
director. In the past two plus years, SouFun paid roughly
$2 million (which has been disclosed
with SEC) to Wall Street Global Training Center for the 300 plus
visitors.
- SouFun's properties in Sanya, Hainan
Island purchased in March 2012
have been in use for SouFun's training and employee award and other
business purposes.
- Shun Cheong Holdings (HKEX: 0650), a public company on the Hong
Kong Stock Exchange, is about 60% owned by our Chairman's family
and the company is in full compliance with Hong Kong Stock Exchange
in respect to its shareholders, directors, and
employees.
- SouFun has been with its current auditor E&Y for more than
5 years and the company keeps a transparent and professional way in
working with E&Y. All auditing related information past and
present has been fully disclosed with SEC.
- SouFun had three dividends since it has been listed with NYSE
two and half years ago. Its cash will be used for its business
expansion as first priority and then the company will need a
$100-150 million cash reserve and
after that the company may consider dividend to its
shareholders.
- SouFun's VIE structure has been there since it was founded in
1999 and has never been changed since almost 14 years ago.
SouFun welcomes all kinds of opinions and comments with respect
to its business and corporate governance even if some of them may
not correctly reflect the fact. We regard these opinions and
comments as useful to improve our future operations. We are
confident that SouFun will be bigger, better, and stronger with its
continuous efforts and positive attitude from its management and
staff members.
About SouFun
SouFun operates the leading real estate Internet portal in
China in terms of the number of
page views and visitors to its websites. Through our websites, we
provide marketing, e-commerce, listing and other value-added
services for China's fast-growing
real estate and home furnishing and improvementsectors. Our
user-friendly websites support active online communities and
networks of users seeking information on, and other value-added
services for, the real estate and home furnishing and
improvementsectors in China.
SouFun currently maintains about 100 offices to focus on local
market needs and its website and database contains real estate
related content covering more than 320 cities in China. For more information about SouFun,
please visit http://ir.soufun.com.
Contacts:
VP of Finance:
Hong Zhao, +86 (10) 5631 8707,
hongzhao@soufun.com
IR Manager:
Yiwen Zhang, +86 (10) 5631 8659,
zhangyiwen@soufun.com
SOURCE SouFun Holdings Limited