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Tech

Alibaba’s IPO making Facebook look like peanuts

By
Kaja Whitehouse
Published May 7, 2014, 6:22 a.m. ET

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba moved on Tuesday to launch one of the largest initial public offerings ever.

The company said it expects the US offering to raise at least $1 billion — but by the time its shares hit the Street the offering is expected to be much larger than that.

After months of salivating over Alibaba’s IPO rumors, investors got their first glimpse into the company’s offering plans when it filed to register its shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company didn’t reveal how many shares it will offer or how much the company will be valued at in the regulatory filing.

The amount of money raised by Alibaba — with Credit Suisse as lead underwriter — is expected to be much higher than the $16 billion May 2012 IPO of Facebook — and potentially even surpass Visa’s $19 billion offering in March 2008.

Alibaba, partly owned by Yahoo!, has posted impressive growth numbers and boasted 231 million active users in 2013 — with a combined gross merchandise volume of $248 billion — or equal to Abu Dhabi’s GDP in 2012.

Even before Tuesday’s filing set the IPO in motion, Alibaba’s value had been estimated at as much as $245 billion, which would make it one of the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world.

A sale of 10 percent of a company that size would make it the biggest IPO ever.

Alibaba had revenues of $5.53 billion for its fiscal year ended in March 2013, up 73 percent over the previous year.

Results for the first nine months of fiscal 2014 suggest that its soaring growth continues.

Alibaba reported revenue of $6.51 billion in the nine months ended Dec. 31, with operating profits of $3.13 billion, nearly double the amount for the entire previous fiscal year.