The Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet juggernaut, raised nearly $21.8 billion in its initial stock sale on Thursday, as investors flocked to buy a piece of the company that is poised to continue dominating China’s burgeoning e-commerce industry.
The company priced its shares at $68 each, at the top end of an already raised range. At that level, the online market operator will have a market value of about $168 billion — much more than eBay, Twitter and LinkedIn combined.
Though it did not claim the title of biggest initial public offering ever, Alibaba will still lay claim to having held one of the biggest stock sales on record, surpassing offerings from Facebook and General Motors. It made its final decision about the price of its shares after a series of meetings at the Midtown Manhattan offices of Citigroup, one of its underwriters.
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Alibaba could still raise more money if its underwriters make use of an overallotment option, known in industry parlance as a “green shoe,” to sell more shares, potentially moving it into the top spot for I.P.O.s.
When it begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, Alibaba will complete a journey to prove itself one of the world’s biggest Internet behemoths. Since it first filed to go public this spring, potential investors have salivated over the chance to buy even a small piece of a 15-year-old company that has become an amalgam of Amazon.com, eBay, Google and a slew of other technology giants.
The stock sale also marks a coming of age of the Internet in China, a country with nearly 1.4 billion, less than half of whom venture online. Alibaba’s main pitch to investors in a globe-spanning roadshow over the past two weeks has been the enormous potential wealth that can be made as more Chinese citizens log onto the Internet and shop for goods.
A lunch presentation held for potential investors last week at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan drew more than 800 attendees eager to hear directly from the company’s top management. By late last week, the six lead underwriters for the enormous offering announced that they would close the order books slightly earlier than scheduled, after having received a huge number of sizable orders.
Such was the enthusiasm that one hedge fund with $3 billion in assets placed a multibillion-dollar order, hoping to receive even a fraction of that amount, a person briefed on the matter has said.
But Alibaba has aimed to stock its investor base with big mutual funds like Fidelity, BlackRock and T. Rowe Price, whom the company and its advisers believe will stick around for the long term and not run at the first sign of trouble.
Alibaba’s offering will have minted a number of new billionaires. Chief among them is Jack Ma, the former English teacher who founded the company in 1999 with dreams of becoming an Internet millionaire. Thanks to the stock sale, the slight but intense Mr. Ma will have raised $867 million by selling a portion of his shares, with his remaining holdings now worth more than $13.1 billion.
It will also reap a windfall for Yahoo, which been a longtime shareholder but sometimes had a rocky relationship with its Chinese partner. The American web pioneer will have raised nearly $8.3 billion through the offering, selling shares as part of an agreement with Alibaba.
The company is scheduled to begin trading on the Big Board under the ticker symbol “BABA.”
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Alibaba's IPO showcased confidence in China's potential, attracted major institutional investments, and tapped into the global tech ecosystem. Its post-IPO performance, founder's inspiring story, and strategic partnerships further solidified its allure.
Alibaba (BABA 2.92%), China's largest e-commerce and cloud company, went public at $68 per American depositary share (ADS) on Sept.18, 2014. It was valued at $169.4 billion upon its debut, making it the largest U.S. initial public offering (IPO) ever. Its stock hit an all-time high of $312.87 on Oct.
Almost eight years ago, Alibaba founder Jack Ma watched as eight of his customers rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, marking the first trading day for the Chinese e-commerce company. Alibaba had just completed the world's largest IPO at the time, raising $25 billion at $68 a share.
On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange raised US$25 billion, giving the company a market value of US$231 billion and, by far, then the largest IPO in world history.
Alibaba revealed quite a bit of state ownership, with more than 12 of its business units having either direct or indirect Chinese government ownership involved.
Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), the Chinese e-commerce giant, continued to struggle in 2023 as a hoped-for recovery in the Chinese economy failed to materialize, the company continued to lose market share to PDD Holdings, and a plan to spin off its non-core businesses took a step back due to new U.S. chip export restrictions.
Despite years of negative sentiment, Alibaba's financial performance has been decent, with revenue up 38% since the stock peaked. Alibaba's P/E of 10 and potential catalysts like AI integration and international expansion make it a good choice for 2024.
According to the latest TipRanks data, approximately 0.66% of the company's stock is held by institutional investors, 0.00% is held by insiders, and 96.53% is held by retail investors. Theofanis Kolokotrones owns the most shares of Alibaba (BABA).
Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, the co-founders of Alibaba Group Holding, have emerged as the two largest shareholders of the Chinese e-commerce giant by aggressively scooping up its tumbling shares in New York and Hong Kong.
For context, Alibaba went public in 2014 and priced the shares at $68. The Chinese e-commerce giant raised $21.8 billion from the offering, which was the biggest IPO until then.
Jack Ma saw an opportunity to create a platform that would level the playing field and give small businesses the tools they needed to compete with larger companies. Alibaba started small, with a group of 18 people working out of Jack Ma's apartment in Hangzhou, China.
Our mission is “to make it easy to do business anywhere.” Our founders started our company to champion small businesses, in the belief that the Internet would level the playing field by enabling small enterprises to leverage innovation and technology to grow and compete more effectively in domestic and global economies ...
The key to his success lay in the productivity of his team. Jack Ma gradually gained people's trust in online payment systems, despite the considerable challenges. Despite the obstacles and hardships faced, Alibaba ultimately achieved enduring success.
While admitting it was more difficult to invest in China than in the US because of policy uncertainty and geopolitical tensions, Munger said at Berkshire's annual meeting in May last year that he invested in China because he could get much better companies at much lower prices.
Like many of the other winning B2B marketplaces, Alibaba succeeded because it took a thoughtful approach towards aggregating supply and demand, continuously added features to integrate marketplace participants deeper into the platform, and took into account the unique geographic and industry environment in which it was ...
Under the powerful eye of founder and former executive chair, Jack Ma, Alibaba grew from a small online storefront in Hangzhou to become China's largest digital retailor in just 20 years, capitalizing on the over 700 million people that are online in China.
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