Alibaba.com nearly triples in Hong Kong debut
Thursday, 8 November 2007
HONG KONG, Nov 7 (AFP): Shares in Alibaba.com nearly tripled in their first day of trading in Hong Kong Tuesday, as the frantic boom in China-related stocks showed no sign of letting up.
Shrugging off warnings of a stock market bubble, investors drove the business website's shares up from the initial offering price of 13.50 Hong Kong dollars (US41.74) to 39.50 at the close-a surge of 193 per cent.
The strong debut followed another sizzling opening from PetroChina, which became the first company in the world valued at one trillion dollars in its first day of trading in Shanghai.
Alibaba.com, a business-to-business website started seven years ago, began trading just days after it raised $1.5 billion in its IPO-the second-largest Internet offering ever after Google in 2004.
The IPO was over-subscribed 150-fold, underlining the massive demand for China-related shares, particularly new issues, despite some analyst fears that a correction is on the cards in future.
"The better-than-expected performance of the stock shows investor bullishness in Chinese IPOs," said Castor Pang, strategist at Sun Hung Kai Financial.
Shrugging off warnings of a stock market bubble, investors drove the business website's shares up from the initial offering price of 13.50 Hong Kong dollars (US41.74) to 39.50 at the close-a surge of 193 per cent.
The strong debut followed another sizzling opening from PetroChina, which became the first company in the world valued at one trillion dollars in its first day of trading in Shanghai.
Alibaba.com, a business-to-business website started seven years ago, began trading just days after it raised $1.5 billion in its IPO-the second-largest Internet offering ever after Google in 2004.
The IPO was over-subscribed 150-fold, underlining the massive demand for China-related shares, particularly new issues, despite some analyst fears that a correction is on the cards in future.
"The better-than-expected performance of the stock shows investor bullishness in Chinese IPOs," said Castor Pang, strategist at Sun Hung Kai Financial.