Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. priced its initial public offering between $60 and $66 per American Depository Share, valuing itself at $155 billion. At $66 per/share, the Chinese e-commerce giant would be valued at a staggering $163 billion. Many IPO analysts however, estimate that the company is worth more than $200 billion.
In a filing Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Alibaba, whose IPO would mark one of the biggest stock-market debuts ever, said it will sell 368.1 million shares. If everything goes according to plan in terms of underwriters claiming their shares, the IPO could raise as much as $24.3 billion for the company. That figure would represent the biggest IPO in history, topping the $22 billion raised by Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. in 2010.
Selling shareholders besides the company include Japanese bank Softbank Corp, which will cut its stake to 32.4% from 34.1% in the Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), which will cut its stake to 16.3% from 22.4%, the filing notes. Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jack Ma Yun will sell a 7.8% stake and Fengmao Investment Corp. will sell 2.1%.
Alibaba is expected to go public in about two weeks and has disclosed that it would list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol (BABA).
The company handles more sales than Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and EBay Inc. (EBAY) combined.
Leave a Reply