Momo, China's most popular dating app/social network, has filed to launch an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock market to raise $300 million in capital.

The company filed its IPO intent with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), putting the company's estimated at approximately  $3 billion. The company will trade under the ticker symbol MOMO.

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Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is the majority shareholder of the company with a 20.7% stake valued at $621 million.

MOMO, founded in 2011, is a free instant messaging application for smartphones used to meet people in the each others' proximity. Users can send images, location information, and audio media messages, and is available for both Android and iOS.

According to its SEC prospectus, Momo has more than 180 million registered users, and more than 60 million monthly active users. It also boasts 25.5 million daily active users, and 2.3 million members, the latter of which marks a 660% increase from last year.                                 

MOMO also claims that its users sent a daily average of 655.2 million one-to-one messages, representing a daily average of 26 one-to-one messages per daily active user during the month of September.

The company also revealed that its sales more than quadrupled from $3.1 million in the second half of 2013 to $13.9 million in the first half of 2014. However, MOMO is not yet profitable as it reported net losses of  $3.8 million, $9.3 million and $8.3 million in 2012, 2013 and the first half of 2014, respectively.

The number of mobile Internet users in China has grown rapidly in recent years. According to New York-based research firm eMarketer, the mobile Internet population in China has increased to 556.1 million in 2013 from 375.6 million in 2011. That figure is expected to rise to 712.4 million by 2017.

Momo says that it's financial success depends greatly on the size of its user base and how engaged they are with the app.

"Growing our user base and increasing the overall level of user engagement on our social networking platform are critical to our business," Momo said its SEC Form 1 filing. "If our user growth rate slows down, our success will become increasingly dependent on our ability to retain existing users and enhance user engagement on our platform.

The firm added that "if our Momo mobile application is no longer one of the social networking tools that people frequently use, or if people do not perceive our services to be interesting or useful, we may not be able to attract users or increase the frequency or depth of their engagement."

Momo also faces risks from new competitors coming to the market. Several user-oriented IM products that gained early popularity, like Momo, have since seen the size of their user base or level of user engagement decline.

"There is no guarantee that we will not experience a similar erosion of our user base or user engagement level in the future," said the company in its filing. "A number of factors could negatively affect user retention, growth and engagement."

TagsMomo, files for IPO, IPO, Nasdaq, dating app