Investors hoping to snatch up stock in Alibaba for a bargain price between $60 and $66 won’t be getting their wish when the Chinese e-commerce giant goes public later this week. In a filing with the SEC yesterday (September 15) Alibaba raised the price range for its American depository shares to a range of $66 to $68.
At the top of the range, Alibaba’s IPO would raise over $25 billion and place the company’s valuation around $168 billion. That would place Alibaba’s market capitalization north of Amazon’s by $18 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal also reports that Ma has been publicly acknowledging plans to aggressively expand Alibaba’s business in the United States and Europe following the record-breaking IPO.
International enthusiasm as also pushed Alibaba’s earnings, sales were up in the second quarter by 46 percent, up to $2.5 billion. The company’s mobile business has also been expanding, though its dominance in that market is not nearly as assured in its e-commerce home base.
Chinese rival Tencent has been aggressively sought to disrupt Alibaba’s dominance, particularly in payments. Though initially sluggish in comparison to Alibaba’s spin-off Alipay, Tencent’s fusion of its Tenpay service with its popular WeChat app has eroded some of Alibaba’s market-share.
The firm will trade under the ticker “BABA” on the New York Stock Exchange.
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