SAN FRANCISCO - Shares of Weibo Corp rose 19 percent in their US debut on Thursday.

Investors are scrutinizing the biggest debut of a Chinese Internet company in years, hoping for clues as to demand for the highly anticipated IPO of far larger e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Weibo Corp's gains came after the owner of a Chinese Twitter-like messaging service priced its shares at the bottom of a target range of $17 to $19, and cut its offer by 16 percent, to 16.8 million American Depositary Shares from 20 million.

The stock rose as high as $24.48 in the afternoon, briefly valuing the company at about $4.7 billion. It closed at $20.24, up $3.24, at 4 pm in trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

At $24, near its Thursday high, Weibo Corp is trading at around 26 times 2013 sales, higher than Facebook Inc's 19 times and Chinese Internet search-leader Baidu Inc's roughly 2 times, but still lagging Twitter's multiple of 40.

The strong debut gave fellow Chinese Internet companies a lift. Parent Sina Corp rose more than 6 percent, video-streaming site Youku Tudou Inc was 3 percent higher, and social network RenRen gained 3 percent.

Weibo Corp's sterling debut could pave the way for its peers. Alibaba is expected to file as early as next week for a US IPO that could raise as much as $15 billion. That would make it the biggest internet company IPO since Facebook Inc's $16 billion coming-out party in 2012.