Chinese ecommerce company
Alibaba Group has filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States. The group, which runs the successful Alibaba ecommerce website, is part-owned by Yahoo and was responsible for ecommerce transactions totaling $248 billion in 2013 – an amount that completely eclipsed companies like E-Bay and Amazon that are more traditionally recognized in the west as ecommerce entities.
Alibaba intends to make 12% of its shares available to the public. The move could prove to be the biggest tech IPO in United States history yielding in excess of $16 billion and shadowing Facebook’s 2012 debut. Owning 22.6% of Alibaba, the IPO could prove very profitable for Yahoo. A decision will be made as to whether stocks will be sold on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange (NSE). When the IPO takes place is still open.
According to a number of analysts, Alibaba is heading towards a valuation of between $150 billion and $200 billion – the upper reaches of that valuation would make the company worth more than Amazon and Facebook. The company caters to an Asian market that US investors are likely to clamor for. China has a population of over 1.3 billion people with over 600 million Internet users, around 300 million Internet shoppers, and over 500 million mobile Internet users. The company managed 5 billion deliveries of goods in 2013.
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