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SAN FRANCISCO - Shares of Weibo Corp rose 19 percent in their U.S. debut on Thursday, sweeping aside concerns that Chinese censorship will hurt the growth of the country's Internet sector and broader worries about lofty tech-stock valuations.

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 IPO.

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 p.m. in trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

That surge caught some investors off-guard because of its well-known susceptibility to unpredictable Chinese censorship and the uncertain outcome of intense domestic competition with the likes of Tencent Holdings Inc.

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.

"It's overdone. These are very speculative names that have tremdnous uncertainty," warned Michael Yoshikami of Destination Wealth Management. "It's very similar to 1999. The big investors are looking past the current numbers to whatever the future might be."

"One day, valuations will matter. Just not today."

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Weibo skyrockets in debut, sweeping aside censorship concerns