Alibaba IPO Information with IPO Dates and IPO Prices

2007 Nov 6

Alibaba.com raised $1.5 billion. The second largest high tech IPO since Google in 2004 On November 6, 2007 Alibaba.com sold 858.9 million IPO shares. The stock performance raised $1.5 billion in the largest high tech offering since Google (NSDQ: GOOG) went public in 2004. It remains off limits to U.S. investors until 40 days from the IPO date because U.S. Securities and Exchange regulation outlaws individual US investors from buying the foreign company's shares until December.

2007 Dec 16

Alibaba.com stock will become available to purchase by US Citizens Alibaba's IPO has remains off limits till December 16th, 2007 to U.S. investors beacause of Securities and Exchange (SEC) regulations that define a 40-day cooling off period on a foreign company's shares.

Who is Alibaba.com?

Alibaba.com is a Business to Business platform with over 1 million business customers

Alibaba International is now the world's largest online business-to-business marketplace, with more than 500,000 people visiting the site every day and 3 million registered users from more than 200 countries.

Alibaba China is the largest B2B marketplace for domestic China trade. As of June 30, 2007, it had nearly 21 million registered users across China.

Alibaba accounts for more than 70% of the Business to Business sales taking place online in China.

Alibaba.com's closest rival is Global Sources, which has 8.4 percent of the market, according to research company Analysys International. The English-language web site Alibaba.com specializes in business-to-business trades, especially for international buyers trying to get into contact with cheap Chinese manufacturers.

Who owns Alibaba?

Alibaba Group owns Alibaba.com

As of January 2007, the Alibaba Group is made up of 5 sub-companies:

  1. Alibaba.com: English language global trade website serving small and medium-sized enterprises.
  2. Alipay: Online payments web site, processing mainly payments within China.
  3. Yahoo! China: Chinese Web search engine.
  4. Taobao.com: Online auctions web site for customers.
  5. Alisoft: Provider of web services to the Chinese Small and Medium-sized Enterprise marketplace.

Alipay

A service similar to PayPal and now one of the leading Chinese online payment systems.

Yahoo! China

In October 2005, the Alibaba Group acquired Yahoo! China and formed a long-term strategic partnership with Yahoo! Inc.. Under the agreement, Alibaba owns and operates Yahoo! China, with exclusive rights to use the Yahoo! brand and technologies in China. (In exchange, Yahoo took a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.). Read more here...

Taobao.com

Within three years Taobao has dethroned eBay as China.s auction king and is now the largest C2C online auctions platform in China with a market share of between 70% and 80%.

Alisoft

Alisoft provides web-based business software services for SMEs in China.

Alibaba's IPO Anouncement

On July 31, 2007, Alibaba announced plans for an IPO in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in which they hope to raise HK$7.8 billion (US$1 billion).

Alibaba.com was listed in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the IPO price of HK$13.5 on 5 November 2007. Its PE ratio at IPO price is over 100 for expected result in 2007. It closed at HK$39.5, nearly 190% higher than IPO price ($13.5), with PE ratio of about 300 for expected result in 2007. It showed the greatest increment in stock price at the first trading day among new stocks listed in 2007.

Is Alibaba undervalued?

It seems absurd that many are attributing mediocre $7.8 billion evaluation to Alibaba based on its 17% IPO release of 1.3 billion shares of stock. Why? For one, Alibaba has a closer correlation with Western pricing due to its primary function as a b2b export platform - i.e. hire revenue margins. And judging by Baidu's market cap (NASDAQ:BIDU) of 10 billion, the calculations are simply absurd.

After all Baidu's revenue is still 100% tied to Chinese yuan and China's online advertising growth (which is behind U.S.), thus valuing each click at about 10-15 less that of Google's.

Moreover, whereas Baidu's revenue for 2007 only reached around 400M, Alibaba already surpassed 1 billion with Goldman Sachs` prediction for 3.13 by the end of 2008.

Finally, what is Alibaba? Alibaba is a b2b platform with over 1 million business customers that charges a base of $5,000 in addition to a range of other services (ranging from document translation to on-site photo shooting, etc). It is a leading SB2C/C2C platform in China through Taobao. And of course, it is a future PayPal of China with its new AliPay system.

More information and links