The Chinese e-commerce company, known for having twice as much revenue as Amazon, may file for an IPO as soon as next week.
You should care because Alibaba could represent the biggest technology IPO ever to potentially exceed the $16 billion that Facebook received in its public offering. If successful, Alibaba’s value could top $150 billion.
In today’s WSJ, a profile of Jack Ma, the charismatic CEO and founder of the company, said that “big” doesn’t even begin to describe the company. For instance, it’s double the size of Amazon, triple the size of eBay and is one-third larger than the value of all the transactions last year at those two U.S.-based e-commerce giants.
Reuters reports the IPO could happen as soon as Monday, or as late as Wednesday, according to its sources. In March, Alibaba had confirmed its IPO was bound for U.S. markets, providing an interesting comparison for its public market rivals here, like Amazon and eBay.
In addition to being an e-commerce company, Alibaba also meddles in a number of other areas, including a payments; smartphone technology and cloud computing. The 15-year-old company has also been on an acquisition spree, spending more than $3.5 billion since last year. Deals include online mapmaker AutoNavi Holdings; a Dropbox competitor; and a microblogging service that is the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
Yesterday, enthusiasm for Alibaba’s offering soared following Yahoo’s quarterly earnings announcement, which disclosed some of the tech giant’s metrics. While Alibaba doesn’t disclose its financials, Yahoo owns a 24 stake in the company, so it has to. Yahoo said compared to the year-ago quarter, the Alibaba Group saw revenue grow 66 percent to $3.06 billion, and profits more than doubled to $1.35 billion.
