AsiaInfo Jumps Most in Five Months on Acquisition Report

AsiaInfo-Linkage Inc. (ASIA), which sells telecommunication software to China’s biggest wireless carriers, surged in New York after Reuters said the company may be acquired in a deal valued at more than $1 billion.

The Beijing-based company gained 15 percent to $12.79 at the close of trading in New York, the most since Jan. 20. The stock has advanced 65 percent this year after falling 53 percent in 2011.

AsiaInfo may be the target of an acquisition by investors including Silverlake, TPG Capital and Primavera Capital, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the deal.

“They think that it’s worth more than the public markets think,” James E. Friedman, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group in New York, who rates the stock neutral, said in a phone interview. “AsiaInfo is a real company with real customers. A deal wouldn’t surprise me.”

The company said earlier this year that it may delist its shares and that it had received acquisition offers from private- equity funds. AsiaInfo hired Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC in February to consider an acquisition proposal from a subsidiary of Citic Capital China Partners II, a private-equity fund owned by China Citic Bank Corp. (998), a unit of the country’s biggest state-owned investment company, the company said in a statement on April 26.

Jimmy Xia, AsiaInfo’s investor relations director, didn’t immediately return a phone call and e-mailed request made after hours for comment on the news report. Phone messages left at the company’s office in Santa Clara, California, were also not immediately returned.

To contact the reporter on this story: Leon Lazaroff in New York llazaroff@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tal Barak Harif at Tbarak@bloomberg.net