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Alibaba's IPO to rock NYSE today [Boston Herald](Boston Herald (MA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 19--Shares of Alibaba Group Holding will start trading today on the New York Stock Exchange after the Chinese e-commerce juggernaut yesterday priced its initial public offering at $68 per share -- the high end of its expected range -- to raise $21.8 billion in the largest U.S.-listed IPO. The price gives the 15-year-old Alibaba a market valuation of $167.6 billion, bigger than that of Amazon, Cisco and eBay. And it has the potential to break the global IPO record if more shares are sold to underwriters. Little known in the United States, Alibaba controls 80 percent of online sales in China, the world's second-largest economy. Its businesses include consumer online marketplace Taobao and wholesale online marketplace Alibaba.com. Former English teacher Jack Ma started Alibaba in his apartment with $60,000. Its revenue in the quarter that ended in June climbed 46 percent from last year to $2.54 billion, while earnings grew 60 percent to almost $1.2 billion. Alibaba earned $3.7 billion in its last fiscal year -- more than Amazon and eBay combined. "There are very few companies that are this big, grow this fast, and are this profitable," Wedbush analyst Gil Luria said. Analysts at Cambridge's Forrester Research don't see Alibaba as a threat to U.S. companies in the short-term. Though Alibaba has expansion plans outside China -- and has made a string of investments in American companies -- it would take "either a major acquisition or a number of years for Alibaba to pull together a platform that could compete with major U.S. companies like Amazon, Apple, eBay and Facebook," the Forrester analysts said in a recent report. But Alibaba's China business continues to grow, and it will remain a critical partner for brands entering the Chinese e-commerce space, they said. The U.S can expect to see many more U.S. IPOs by Chinese companies, according to technology forecaster Daniel Burrus of Burrus Research Associates. "And they will be well-funded, and they will be big," he said. Herald wire services were used in this report. ___ (c)2014 Boston Herald Visit the Boston Herald at www.bostonherald.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |