Renren Inc. (RENN)

Renren Inc. was best known as the operator of Renren.com, a social networking site that was once called the Facebook of China. The site was especially popular with Chinese university students in the late 2000s. The company also ran online games, a group-buying site and various internet ventures. Its American depositary shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RENN.

The business grew out of Xiaonei, a campus social network launched in 2005 and later acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive. Renren completed its NYSE initial public offering in May 2011, raising about $743 million in one of the most watched Chinese tech listings of that year. Early investors included SoftBank. The stock fell well below its offering price within a few years as users moved to mobile platforms such as WeChat.

Renren then reinvented itself as an investment and software holding company. It sold its original social networking business in 2018 and built up stakes in fintech, used-car and software ventures. Its main operating businesses became Chime, a CRM and sales platform for real estate agents, and Trucker Path, an app suite for commercial truck drivers. Both are U.S.-focused software companies, and the corporate center of gravity shifted toward the United States.

To reflect this focus on vertical software, Renren renamed itself Moatable, Inc. effective June 22, 2023. On the same day its ADSs began trading on the NYSE under the new symbol MTBL and the RENN ticker was retired. Moatable describes itself as a company that incubates, acquires and builds vertical industry SaaS businesses, with offices in Phoenix, Arizona.