One of my most reliable sources in China scheduled a call with me yesterday.  Unfortunately, due to the storms in California, both my home and my office were without power, so I couldn’t use Skype.  I ended up trundling down to the local Hampton Inn and they were nice enough to let me use both an AC outlet and an Ethernet port so that I could talk to my colleague (and also check my e-mail).  For the record, I really appreciate them.  I had run down the battery in my laptop, so I couldn’t risk hoping that I would be able get a seat near an available outlet at the local Starbucks.

Anyway, the rumor in Beijing is that both hiSoft and iSoftStone are planning to tap the U.S. public markets early this year.  My friend didn’t have specific information about what form they were going to use for their offerings.

Does this sound like a good idea?  Given the recent performance of VanceInfo (VIT) (they priced their offering at US$8.50; it immediately jumped to $9.50 when it opened; it closed yesterday at $8.91) and Longtop Financial (LFT) (priced at US$17.50; reached $35.22 during the second day of trading; closed yesterday at $22.12), I can’t help but wonder about the level of demand in the U.S. public markets for shares of Chinese software outsourcing companies.  Would you buy the shares, or American Depositary Shares, of any of these companies?

Update: Last week was pretty much a disappointment for the broader indexes, but our two favorite stocks had a particularly bad week.  Longtop Financial (LFT) hit a 52 week low of US$14.43 on 2008-Jan-16, and VanceInfo (VIT) likewise traded at a 52 week low of $5.91 on 2008-Jan-18.  We can only hope that the coming week is kinder.

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