NEW YORK -- Chinese mobile internet company Cheetah Mobile Inc was expected to raise about $168 million from its initial public offering after its shares were priced at 14 dollars, near the high end of its expected price range.

The company announced Thursday that it sold 12 million American depository shares (ADSs), which were expected to be priced at $14 per ADS.

Cheetah Mobile's shares opened trading at 15.25 dollars per share under ticker symbol "CMCM" Thursday morning. Its shares rose about 12 percent to trade at 15.7 dollars apiece around midday.

Morgan Stanley,JP Morgan and Credit Suisse were among the underwriters for the IPO.

Cheetah Mobile was founded in October 2010 and was formerly known as Kingsoft Internet Software Holdings Limited until March when it changed to the current name.

Cheetah Mobile provides various applications to its global users, such as junk file cleaning, memory boosting and privacy protection application Clean Master, internet security application Duba Anti-virus, as well as safe internet browser Cheetah Browser.

According to data from China-based consultancy iResearch's iUser Tracker, the company is ranked the second largest internet security applications provider in China by monthly active users in March 2014.

The company's prospectus filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission has claimed that the company, in order to improve users' internet and mobile experience, has developed a platform that offers applications and global content distribution channels powered by its proprietary cloud-based data analytics engines.

Before it, China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd also filed its IPO report in the United States late Tuesday, in hope of raising $1 billion. But analysts predicted that the company could pool around 15 billion dollars to $20 billion through its IPO, which is expected to be one of the largest stock listings in history.

Earlier this year, China's IT education provider Tarena International, privately held medical services provider iKang Healthcare Group, micro-blogging site Weibo and online-to-offline real estate services firm Leju also got listed in the US stock markets.

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