Youku, China's largest video website, announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter and an offering of about US$600 million in a follow-on sale of American Depositary Receipts.

Youku had US$19.5 million in net revenue for the first quarter, up 163 percent from a year ago, with strong brand advertising income helping the company to narrow its continuing losses. The company lost US$7.1 million in the first quarter, an improvement of 8 percent compared the same period of last year.

The significant increase was mainly due to the strong performance of brand advertising revenues, which represented 94 percent of the total net revenue.

"Youku is revving up its investment to streamline users' payment means and set up a quality movie database to attract users," said Liu Dele, Youku's CEO. "If subscriptions becomes a big contributor to revenues, we will write it into future reports."

Its new shares offering plan come only six months after it staged an IPO on the NASDAQ in December. The company said it intends to use the proceeds from this offering to invest in technology, infrastructure and product development, purchase more video content, expand its sales and marketing and for other corporate purposes to consolidate its leading position.