Mixi going public in September

Here’s Fukumimi report (via gen kanai). CNET Japan (in Japanese).

Update: According to Nikkei, its valuation based on bookbuilding method is said to be about $ 1.09 billion (let dollar =100 yen for convenience). If we devide it by the number of “friends” (members, I mean), we get $ 218 per friend which in a way represents the value of the company.

As Fukumimi notes that the valuation is crazy, the cost per friend at $218 might be too high, when compared to the case of MySpace deal, to the estimated acquisition cost per friend at $29 ($ 580 m/29 million friends, per Fukumimi) or $5-6 per friend (the same MySpace case, with a bit different approach, $ 580 /100 million friends, per Donna Bogatin who used the number of “friends” of the subsequent year as a denominator via Scott Karp, via Jeff Jarvis).

*MySpace at wikipedia.

While we really don’t know the fair price of aquiring a non-paying customer on the so-called Social Network Services (SNS), MIXI IPO will provide a bases for for the better valuation of it, as both MySpace and YouTube will be valued far more than MIXI in case they’d go public.

Update2: Here is what is called mokuromi-sho (looks like a business plan, 129 pages in total) in pdf in Japanese I’ve found e-trade securities site (etrade.ne.jp). This states the advertising revenue in the seventh period ending March, 2006, was JPY 640,837,000 when its membership reached about 3 million. If I’d use the quick and dirty analysis that Donna Bogatin employed (again, let 100 yen = dollar).

Revenue per “friend”: (1) $2.14 (when divided by 3m)

(2) $1.28 (when divided by 5m)

Cost per “friend”: (1) $363 (when divided by 3m)

(2) $218 (when divided by 5m)

To me it seems out of question. In the field of direct marketing where I live, we often use what is called media ratio (in Japanese, many people call it メディアレーション ? or media rehshon), which is simply [product revenue]/[media cost], the measure of evaluating the direct response media. In my personal opinion,

a) “Excellent” when it is >1.0

b) “Pretty good” when it is in the range of 0.5 -1.0

c) There is still a “hope” when 0.1-0.5

Again, out of question, otherwise.

Oh I was ignoring the revenue from job matching advertising business. If we add part on the revenue side, the revenue becomes JPY 1,893,452,000 (USD 18,934,520 at JPY 100/USD). The revenue per friend now becomes:

Revenue per “friend”: (1) $6.3 (when divided by 3m)

(2) $3.8 (when divided by 5m)

Dividing each by respective cost per friend of $363 and $ 218 gives the media ratios:

(1) 0.03

(2) 0.01