Alibaba.com to unveil listing to investors
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
HONG KONG, Oct 22 (AFP): Chinese online trading firm, Alibaba.com, was Monday set to give retail investors details of its Hong Kong listing, in what is expected to be the largest Internet initial public offering (IPO) ever by a mainland firm.
The website, which provides a place for mostly-Chinese manufacturers to advertise and sell their products to the wider world and for importers to source Chinese products, is due to start trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange early next month.
The institutional part of the offering has already been oversubscribed by 50 times, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
The much-anticipated listing has attracted commitments from US computer giant Cisco, insurance company America International Group, several top Hong Kong tycoons and Internet trailblazer Yahoo!, the English-language daily said Monday.
Yahoo!, which already owns a 40 per cent stake in Alibaba.com's parent company Alibaba Group-which actually runs Yahoo!'s operation in China-is also said to be among the investors.
The listing is expected to pitch the company's share price at around 10 to 12 Hong Kong dollars. The upper figure would give the company a value of more than 90 times this year's forecast earnings.
Some analysts have warned the high price, which will overtake the listing record of domestic peer Tencent, has overvalued the company.
Alibaba.com, has more than 4,400 full-time employees. It has 21 million registered members for its Chinese site and 3.6 million for the international site, according to its website.
Alibaba Group, founded by former English teacher Jack Ma, also operates popular online auctioneer Taobao.com. None of the parent group's other operations are included in the IPO.
A company spokeswoman told the news agency that a video press conference due at 6.00pm (1000 GMT) would provide details of the listing, which media reports have said could raise as much as US$1.30 billion.
The website, which provides a place for mostly-Chinese manufacturers to advertise and sell their products to the wider world and for importers to source Chinese products, is due to start trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange early next month.
The institutional part of the offering has already been oversubscribed by 50 times, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
The much-anticipated listing has attracted commitments from US computer giant Cisco, insurance company America International Group, several top Hong Kong tycoons and Internet trailblazer Yahoo!, the English-language daily said Monday.
Yahoo!, which already owns a 40 per cent stake in Alibaba.com's parent company Alibaba Group-which actually runs Yahoo!'s operation in China-is also said to be among the investors.
The listing is expected to pitch the company's share price at around 10 to 12 Hong Kong dollars. The upper figure would give the company a value of more than 90 times this year's forecast earnings.
Some analysts have warned the high price, which will overtake the listing record of domestic peer Tencent, has overvalued the company.
Alibaba.com, has more than 4,400 full-time employees. It has 21 million registered members for its Chinese site and 3.6 million for the international site, according to its website.
Alibaba Group, founded by former English teacher Jack Ma, also operates popular online auctioneer Taobao.com. None of the parent group's other operations are included in the IPO.
A company spokeswoman told the news agency that a video press conference due at 6.00pm (1000 GMT) would provide details of the listing, which media reports have said could raise as much as US$1.30 billion.