Alibaba: The Giant of e-Commerce

[cirr]

WOW，WOW，WOW！

UPDATED : Thursday, 06 February, 2014, 2:01pm

Alibaba, Sina cast envious eyes on Tencent's 'Hongbao'

Doug Young

A screenshot of a message page on the Wechat app telling the user he or she has won a hongbao, or "red envelope" via the app.

Things have certainly changed over the last 3 years in Lunar New Year messaging, as reflected by the flood of tech executives using their microblogs to weigh in on Tencent's (HKEx: 700) launch of a red envelope gift function for its popular WeChat platform over the holiday period.

Most of the comments were admiring and even in a slight state of awe at the big success of WeChat's hongbao product, which lets users send gift money to their friends and relatives over the popular instant messaging platform. But at least one post from Alibaba smelled of sour grapes, and a Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) executive also took a backhanded swipe at the rival to his company's own Weibo microblogging service.

I'll start with my own view that this new function by Tencent looks like a brilliant move, combining many of its strengths to create a product that was almost guaranteed to be popular among WeChat's hundreds of millions of users. What's more, the hongbao product was actually one with money-earning potential, since it involved the sending of money to friends and relatives in an electronic form of the cash-filled red envelopes typically given out this time of year.

The product is similar in many ways to the huge volume of greetings that many Chinese used to send via simple text messages to their friends during the Lunar New Year. In my reporting days, I remember how China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) and China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU) used to issue releases each year about the hundreds of millions of text messages sent by their users each New Year's day. Those stories have largely disappeared now, probably because the big telcos don't want to publicise the dwindling popularity of these simple messages as users opt for more elaborate greetings that can be sent over WeChat and other multimedia services.

WeChat's red envelope function allows users to bind their bank cards to their WeChat accounts, and then designate sums of money to put in a virtual red envelopes that can be sent electronically to other users. It looks like Tencent didn't actually make any money from the envelopes themselves, but instead benefited by getting 5 million of its users to bind their bank cards to their accounts. That's an extremely important step as Tencent tries to build up lucrative e-commerce business on WeChat. By comparison, the mobile arm of Alibaba's Alipay mobile service, known as Alipay Wallet, currently has about 10 million registered users. According to Tencent, users sent some 20 million red envelopes over the first 2 days of the Lunar New Year.

Comments from Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) executive Tao Weihua were typical of the generally positive sentiment towards Tencent, praising WeChat for its latest success and also taking a backhand poke at Sina for failing to develop a similar product for its equally popular Weibo service. Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) wireless executive Yue Guofeng similarly noted that the huge success of the Tencent product marked a turning point for Sina Weibo, whose popularity has recently started to drop following its meteoric rise over the last 3 years.

Alibaba certainly understands the threats to its dominance in both e-commerce and electronic payments posed by WeChat. It launched Laiwang, a rival mobile social networking app, last fall and has aggressively promoted the product at every possible opportunity since then. Alibaba's public relations chief Gu Jianbing used his microblog to question some of the figures that Tencent was giving out about the New Year promotion's success. Sina vice president Chu Dachen was a bit more muted but still critical in his comments, implying that WeChat's product was popular among younger users but that Sina Weibo's own New Year greeting products were the choice of more sophisticated people.

All of that said, there's clearly no denying that WeChat's hongbao product was a major success over the Lunar New Year, and could easily maintain its popularity into the months ahead as people use it to send virtual red envelopes for other celebratory occasions like birthdays and weddings. I have no doubt the function will be a major topic of discussion in the Sina and Alibaba board rooms in the next few weeks, as China's Internet giants continue their nonstop race for dominance on the country's mobile Internet.

Alibaba, Sina cast envious eyes on Tencent's 'Hongbao' | South China Morning Post

 

[Raphael]

Some Chinese vent over Alibaba's big foreign stakeholders| Reuters

(Reuters) - Angry Chinese nationalists finally woke up on Wednesday to the fact that Japanese and American companies own more than half of e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba, and have done for years.

"Who is Jack Ma working for?" asked some on microblogs, hours after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd filed a prospectus for an initial public offering of its shares in the United States, which some say could be the biggest listing ever of a technology stock.

Ma was the lead founder of Alibaba in 1999 and has become something of a cult hero to entrepreneurs and many ordinary Chinese, saying he champions small business against industry giants.

"Jack Ma is a big traitor," wrote another user on Tencent Weibo, a major Twitter-like Chinese microblogging site.

In its IPO prospectus, Alibaba detailed ties with its two principal shareholders - Japanese telecoms firm SoftBank Corp, which owns a 34.4 percent stake, and Yahoo Inc with a 22.6 percent stake.

SoftBank invested in Alibaba 14 years ago, and Yahoo bought a 40 percent stake in 2005. Both holdings have long been public knowledge and have been covered in previous disclosures.

Yet this old information triggered a clamor of dismay and indignation among some anti-Japan Internet users in China on Wednesday, who also noted that Chinese native Ma is only Alibaba's third-biggest shareholder, with an 8.9 percent stake.

Some called for a boycott of Alibaba's popular trading websites - Taobao and Tmall - though that's likely to have little impact on businesses that brought in most of Alibaba's $6.5 billion of revenue in April-December.

TROUBLED TIES

The Asian neighbors - and the world's second- and third-largest economies - have a troubled history.

Japan invaded China in 1937 and ruled it with a brutal hand for eight years. Millions of Chinese were killed and tens of thousands of Chinese men were shipped off to work in Japanese mines and construction. Chinese women were forced to work as so-called comfort women. China last month impounded a ship owned by Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd over a dispute dating back to the 1930s war. Mitsui later paid about $29 million for the release of the vessel.

In 2012, sales of Japanese-branded cars were badly hit in the fallout from another row between Beijing and Tokyo over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

"Calling someone 'traitor' has been (a custom) since the May Fourth period," said Zhang Ming, a professor of international relations at Beijing's Renmin University, referencing student demonstrations in 1919 against Japan receiving Chinese territory from Germany after the First World War.

"When it comes to why Chinese people make a big fuss, it relates to China's environment: China's officials don't stop this kind of behavior," said Zhang. "These past couple of years, there's been a massive clamor for populism and nationalism."

As one microblogger wrote of SoftBank's stake in Alibaba: "Oh my god, Japan's claws reach everywhere!"

Personally I don't think it's a big concern.
China's market should be as open to foreign investment as foreign markets are to China.

 

[bolo]

Some Chinese vent over Alibaba's big foreign stakeholders| Reuters



Personally I don't think it's a big concern.
China's market should be as open to foreign investment as foreign markets are to China.

I mentioned this a long time ago. It's not good news.
Congrats to Japan for easily taken over a former Chinese company with ease. Alibaba is Japanese company now. well done.

 

[xunzi]

Nobody gives a shit about stake ownership. It's about the brand and where the origin is. Many US tech companies are owned by Middle-East wealthy family.

 

[TaiShang]

Nobody gives a shit about stake ownership. It's about the brand and where the origin is. Many US tech companies are owned by Middle-East wealthy family.

Indeed. Does not really matter.

What is interesting in this case is not the news itself but how the West uses some micro-bloggers (who could be anybody disguised as somebody) as news-sources.

Now the above news makes it sound like the whole China has gone crazy.

In the same manner, Chinese media should start treating US bloggers and online (anonymous) commentators as news-worthy (regardless of who they might be and from where they might be writing, so long as they use US social media, they must be USer -- because no body other than the USers can speak English, after all) and service it as news-report. You can find an amazing amount of crazy comments any point in time flowing like hell in the US. This way, you can paint the US population in any color you want, judging by a few bloggers and commentators with nick-names.There are racists, pedophiles, xenophobics and outright terrorists commenting and posting on daily basis in the US. Select few of them and generalize that across the whole society as it fits your agenda.

Why can't we do that?

 

[cirr]

Alibaba locates potential in Beidou system

By Meng Jing (China Daily) Updated: 2014-07-08 07:07

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is set to join with the country's largest defense equipment manufacturer to promote the Beidou satellite navigation system for civilian use, insiders said.

Numerous reports on Monday said the cash-flush Alibaba Group has added to its latest investment spree by inking a deal with State-owned China North Industries Group Corp for a joint venture based on the Beidou system.

The project has registered capital of 1 billion yuan ($160 million), according to Dazhihui News Agency, an organization affiliated with stock market consultancy Shanghai DZH Ltd.

Dazhihui, which first broke the news online, quoted sources as saying that Alibaba has big plans for Beidou that include a further expected investment of more than 10 billion yuan.

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Beidou navigates its way to global stage

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Alibaba chooses NYSE for IPO


Alibaba's public relations office declined to comment because it is in its quiet period due to its IPO debuting in the United States next month. But making investments and breaking into new sectors are not something new for Alibaba, which has spent more than $5 billion since the beginning of the year and transformed its e-commerce empire into a conglomerate covering a growing number of industries, from wealth management to the media, from professional soccer to dairy.

Alibaba's latest move is expected to boost the civil use of the Beidou system, said Cao Chong, an expert with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Location Based Service (LBS) Association of China.

"As an Internet company, which is eager to promote location-based services, Alibaba enjoys an edge in developing apps that are popular in people's daily lives," Cao said.

According to Cao, the Beidou system is quite accurate in terms of locating people indoors, while other navigation systems are mostly used for outdoor use. "By offering Beidou-based services, Alibaba Group can bring its location-based services to the next level because people spend most of their time indoors," he said.

The central government in October released a medium- and long-term plan to boost the Beidou system's domestic market share to 60 percent by 2020. The goal is to raise the navigation-related industry to 400 billion yuan, popularize Beidou throughout the nation and enhance the international effectiveness of the system.

Yin Jingxue, an analyst with Internet consultancy Analysys International, said: "Civilian use of the Beidou system is still in its infancy in China, as its navigation chips are more expensive compared with similar chips made overseas. So the Beidou system is still largely used for military and industry applications."

Yin said the Beidou system is not suitable for wide personal use unless there is a technological breakthrough. "There is still a long way to go because mobile phone manufacturers in China are very eager to reduce their production costs. There is no reason for them to produce mobile phones with expensive chips when they can buy other chips at lower prices overseas," she said.

"China North Industries Group Corp has traditionally been doing business in the defense technology and manufacturing sector rather than the satellite navigation industry," said Wang Ya'nan, deputy editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine. "But the company must have seen huge potential in this field, so it established a branch in 2009 to tap into the market."

He said State-owned defense enterprises have spared no effort to diversify their operations so they can handle increased competition.

"I think that working with Internet giants such as Alibaba will help North Industries gain more access to small businesses that can become users of satellite navigation services," Wang said.

​

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Top 10 ways Alibaba is building an empire

Alibaba locates potential in Beidou system - Business - Chinadaily.com.cn Alibaba, ShopRunner plan to launch joint China service

 

[Edison Chen]

Silicon Valley dominates the Internet, but this week's initial public offering by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. shows how much action is shifting to Asia.

When the Chinese e-commerce firm begins trading Friday, four of the world's 10 largest Internet companies by stock-market value will be based in Asia, up from two in 2004, according to S&P Capital IQ.

Combined, Alibaba, Tencent Holdings Ltd. 0700.HK -1.94% , Baidu Inc. BIDU +2.30%and JD.com Inc. JD -3.71% are worth about $426 billion, assuming the offering by Alibaba after the U.S. market close on Thursday values the company at about $165 billion. The four biggest U.S.-based Internet companies— Google Inc., GOOGL +1.23%Facebook Inc., FB +2.01% Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +1.19% and eBay Inc.EBAY +1.28% —have $797 billion in combined stock-market value.

Twenty-six other Internet companies based in China, Japan or South Korea already have gone public so far this year, raising a total of $4.45 billion, according to Dealogic. Alibaba is expected to increase Asia's total by $25 billion. In the U.S., 21 Internet companies with IPOs in 2014 have raised $3.2 billion, while nine Internet companies in the U.K. have completed IPOs for a total of $4.7 billion.

"When I think of the seven great Internet companies in the world five years from now, I think of Facebook, Google, Apple,AAPL -0.76% Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu," says Jim Breyer, one of the most successful venture-capital investors and best known for his early bet on Facebook.

Since 2004, Mr. Breyer and his partners in China have poured more than $2 billion into Internet firms based there. (See the rise of Asia's internet giants in an interactive.)

The stock market is an important barometer of how far and how fast Asian companies are rising in the Internet's global pecking order, largely because of their aggressive expansion in Asia.

About 45% of the world's nearly three billion Internet users are in Asia, according to the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations information-technology agency. In China, more than 500 million people go online using smartphones. The number of social-media users in the Asian-Pacific region is expected to approach one billion by year-end, almost five times the total in North America, says research firm Webcertain Group Ltd.

Joseph Chen, chief executive of RenrenInc., RENN -2.66% a Chinese social-networking firm worth about $1.2 billion, says the "big market-cap companies benefit from the size of China. It's the same technology, but when you put it in China, it's worth more."

Asia's gravitational pull on the Internet is bolstered by language differences in countries like Korea and censorship in China that keeps foreign firms out. Conversely, even the region's nimblest Internet companies usually have little presence in the U.S. and lack the muscle, pizazz or interest to challenge entrenched household names like Google outside of Asia.

Their innovations also are seen as more practical than groundbreaking. For example, Tencent's mobile instant-messaging service WeChat (called "Weixin" in China), which has about 440 million users, is also used as a platform to sell games, helping Tencent generate far more revenue than larger rival WhatsApp Inc., which has about 600 million users and is being acquired by Facebook for $19 billion.

Tencent now is trying to move beyond games and is pitching WeChat as a way to buy airline tickets and money-market funds or make down payments on property. Tencent also has installed 10,000 beverage and snack vending machines across China where purchases can be made with the scan of a smartphone code—and then deducted from a personal online account at Tencent.

So far, the formula has been highly profitable. Tencent's profit margin in the second quarter was 32%, compared with 27% at Facebook and 21% at Google. Tencent's stock-market value is $148 billion, compared with Facebook's $194 billion.

Last year, Japanese messaging app Line Corp. had revenue of $323 million from mobile games, sales of cutesy emoticons and advertising—or 16 times the estimated revenue of WhatsApp.

Success will force at least some of Asia's strongest Internet firms to become more ambitious elsewhere, says Takeshi Idezawa, Line's chief operating officer. The company has more users outside Japan than it does inside its home country and wants to expand even more aggressively abroad before foreign competitors push into Japan.

Line is preparing for a possible initial stock offering in New York or Tokyo. "I do think we are at a turning point," Mr. Idezawa says of Internet companies in Asia.

Rakuten Inc., 4755.TO -1.16% Japan's biggest online-shopping site, is so determined to expand in other countries that it has required since 2012 that all in-house meetings and memos be in English.

Last week, Rakuten said it would buy U.S. online-coupon website Ebates Inc. for about $1 billion. Rakuten has said it hopes to increase its business outside Japan to about 50% of sales from the current 10%. Ebates was Rakuten's third big purchase of a non-Japanese firm so far this year.

Baidu has a 79% market share of the Internet search business in China, but is barely a blip elsewhere. Baidu's search engine in Japan has gained little traction. In July, Baidu launched a search engine for Brazil, and the company is considering expanding into Egypt and Thailand.

In a sign of growing interest in Silicon Valley, Baidu is spending $300 million to build an artificial-intelligence research center there. It will be run by Andrew Ng, the former chief of Stanford University's artificial-intelligence lab.

Tencent has bought stakes in two large U.S. game makers as part of its push to bring popular games into China. The company's international expansion beyond China consists largely of WeChat, which has been downloaded more than 100 million times outside the country.

Seven of this year's 10 biggest Internet acquisitions by value were made by Asian firms, with Alibaba and Tencent spending a total of more than $11 billion, according to Dealogic.

Alibaba founder and Executive Chairman Jack Ma said Monday that the Chinese e-commerce firm plans to expand aggressively in the U.S. and European markets after its stock sale. In an earlier letter to investors, he wrote: "In the past decade, we measured ourselves by how much we changed China. In the future, we will be judged by how much progress we bring to the world."

In its latest quarter, Alibaba's online shopping sites in China generated 85% of the company's revenue of $2.5 billion. In June, Alibaba launched a U.S. shopping site called 11 Main, which is currently available only to customers who first sign up and get an email invitation.

Matt Cheng, founder of venture-capital firm Cherubic Ventures, says he has seen a huge transformation over the past decade, particularly in China. At first, the country had a smattering of promising startups and an overwhelming number of clones trying to copy Internet businesses in the U.S.

Now, young Internet entrepreneurs in Asia bristle at being compared with Silicon Valley, and Mr. Cheng is increasingly battling some of the largest U.S.-based venture-capital firms to buy stakes in up-and-coming Internet firms. "Competition has gotten really fierce," he says.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/internet-power-balance-tilts-toward-asia-1410887497?mod=e2fb

 

[Raphael]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-17/softbank-s-son-overtakes-yanai-as-japan-s-richest-person.html

Masayoshi Son surpassed Fast Retailing Co. Chairman Tadashi Yanai as Japan’s richest person yesterday after SoftBank Corp. surged 16 percent since the start of last week.

Son, 57, has a net worth of $16.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Yanai, the country’s second-richest person, controls a $16.2 billion fortune.

Softbank owns about 34 percent of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and is benefiting from plans by China’s biggest e-commerce company to raise the amount it’s seeking in an initial public offering to as much as $21.8 billion, coming a step closer to breaking a global fundraising record.

“The impending IPO of Alibaba does make Masayoshi Son a lot wealthier,” Desmond Chua, a Singapore-based strategist at CMC Markets, said by phone. “While Internet stocks have been volatile, there is good value in some of them. The growing popularity of smartphones suggest the advertising revenue some of these companies would pick up.”

Alibaba increased the top end of its IPO price range this week. Even at the higher price, it’s offering shares at a price-to-earnings multiple that’s below what other publicly traded Chinese Internet peers fetch. Founder Jack Ma told prospective investors in Hong Kong this week that he won’t seek too high a valuation, two people who attended the meeting said.


Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Corp.

Rare Stumble
The Japanese billionaire controls almost 272 million shares of Softbank directly and through four holding companies. The Bloomberg ranking excludes 63.7 million shares pledged as collateral against possible debts. Hiroe Kotera, a spokeswoman for Softbank, declined to comment on Son’s personal shareholdings.

Son stumbled last month when he failed to merge his Sprint Corp. with T-Mobile US Inc. Sprint, controlled by SoftBank, ended talks with the fourth-largest U.S. carrier on regulatory concerns, a person with knowledge of the matter said. That leaves Son with Sprint, the No. 3 carrier in a market where it’s dwarfed by larger competitors and growing slower than T-Mobile.

The billionaire may be forging ahead with expansion plans, with Softbank selling bonds just weeks after he abandoned the takeover and signaled he would seek different targets.

Fast Retailing’s Yanai, 65, turned his father’s tailor shop into Asia’s biggest clothing retailer. The company cut its annual profit forecast in July for a second time in the current fiscal year after suffering losses at its J Brand premium denim unit.

‘Vigorous Discussion’
The maker of Uniqlo casual apparel has been seeking overseas growth amid slowing domestic demand and will record a special loss for U.S.-based J Brand. It owns 80 percent of the company, which sells premium denim products in more than 2,000 outlets in the U.S., including department stores.

Yanai is on Softbank’s board, and contributed to a “vigorous discussion” when he raised concerns about Son’s desire to expand into renewable energy after the major earthquake in Japan in March 2011, according to Tokyo-based company’s annual report.

Yukie Sakaguchi, a spokeswoman at Fast Retailing, declined to comment on Yanai’s holdings.

 

[Raphael]

He dumped his Facebook shares to buy Alibaba. Smart guy.

-------------------------------------------

This Putin buddy is going to make a bundle from the Alibaba IPO – Quartz


Russia’s richest man, Alisher Usmanov, is about to get a little richer. The oligarch, steel baron, and tech investor, whose net worth is estimated at $16.3 billion, invested in Alibaba multiple times, including in 2011, when the company was worth about one-fifth of its $168 billion valuation, based on its $68 a share stock price when it starts trading on the NYSE this morning.

Usmanov’s total holding in Alibaba is not public, but his ownership is mentioned in a report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on the “risks” of investing in Chinese internet companies. Usmanov purchased the stock through two entities that have made multiple investments in the online shopping giant.

• He owns one-third of Digital Sky Technologies (DST), an operating company started by Russian tech investor Yuri Milner in 2005 (which, despite its tech focus has a remarkably rudimentary website.) A group led by DST, Silverlake Partners, and Yunfeng Capital invested $1.6 billion in Alibaba in 2011, when the company was valued at about $32 billion. Silverlake, Yunfeng, and “affiliated entities” own 4% of Alibaba after the IPO.
• Late last year DST dumped its shares in Facebook and other US tech stocks, raising $300 billion, and invested in Chinese companies including Alibaba.
• Usmanov also founded USM Holdings, which lists Alibaba as one of its technology investments.

Usmanov one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “oligarchs,” a group of businessmen with close ties to the Kremlin, and last year Putin awarded him Russia’s highest civilian award, the Order for Service to the Fatherland. Anti-Putin activists have also called for the US to sanction Usmanov to punish Putin for the invasion of Ukraine. In April, Usmanov cut his stake in USM Holdings to just under 50%, a move that would mean any of USM’s assets would not be frozen if Usmanov was put on the US sanctions list.

 

[sicsheep]

Alibaba, BABA the Chinese e-commerce giant whose magical name and real-world business prospects inspired frenzied interest for months ahead of its record-setting initial public offering, surged more than 33% following its delayed debut Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Order imbalances over the intensely hyped, widely sought Alibaba IPO delayed initial trading by over 2 1/4 hours. American depositary shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., priced at $68, opened at $92.70 once trading finally got under way at 11:53 a.m. ET. Shares quickly jumped to $99.70 before settling back to about $90 in early afternoon trading. More than 100 million shares traded in the first 20 minutes of trading.

Early indications had shares opening at $80 to $83, but demand was so strong, the offering price had to be revised 10 times.

Scott Cutler, NYSE's global listings chief, said the IPO was repeatedly delayed by massive order imbalances.

"We've got hundreds of thousands of orders,'' Cutler told CNBC after an hour-long delay. "We're chasing to find sellers. Even at these levels, there doesn't appear to be a lot of sellers."

"There's a lot of hype over this stock. An $80 price is not unreasonable - demand could stampede the price,' notes Drew Dorweiler, a Montreal-based business valuation expert with Dartmouth Partners and a trustee of The Appraisal Foundation. "The fundamentals are there for incredible volume and excitement."

The IPO raised $21.8 billion, surpassing the $17.8 billion raised by credit card marketer Visa's 2008 IPO and Facebook's $16 billion IPO in 2012. Alibaba's IPO falls just short of the record $22 billion raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai by Agricultural Bank of China's 2010 stock offering. But given Friday's demand, Alibaba's underwriters could add additional 40 million shares, bringing the IPO to $25 billion.

At current price levels, Alibaba's market capitalization is greater than blue-chip giants IBM, Procter & Gamble and General Electric.

Alibaba's business model - unlike other young Internet-focused companies with more prospects and buzz than actual earnings and revenue growth - created swelling demand for its shares.

A holding company that combines the sales, merchandising and financial services reach of Amazon, eBay and PayPal, Alibaba had revenue of $8.5 billion in its last fiscal year, up from $5.5 billion in 2013. Revenue for the second quarter ended June 30 jumped 46% to $2.53 billion and net income jumped 137% to $2 billion.

Governance experts, including Harvard University's Lucian Bebchuck, have warned of the "serious risks" tied to Alibaba, mostly over the grip insiders have. But most investors have shrugged off governance concerns over Alibaba's lack of independent directors and 30 managing partners, who have the right to nominate a majority of directors.

A successful pre-IPO roadshow seemingly allayed concerns, and demand for shares prompted the company on Monday to raise the IPO's price range to $66 to $68 ashare, up from an initial $60 to $66. Most shares were allocated to large institutional shareholders, not individual shareholders. Alibaba options will begin trading Sept. 29.

Company insiders and early investors will be able to cash out today, unfettered by typical pre-IPO lockups.

Billionaire founder and executive chair Jack Ma, the diminutive former English teacher who started the company from his one bedroom apartment in 1999, plans to sell about 6% of his stake, or about 12.8 million shares. He'll remain Alibaba's biggest individual shareholders, with a 7.7% stake.

Speaking to CNBC ahead of trading, Ma said the IPO would not change the culture of the company.

"I don't want to disappoint shareholders. I want to make sure they're making money,'' he said. "I worry about making my customers happy."

Japanese wireless carrier Softbank,an early Alibaba investor,which provided the then-startup with $20 million in 2000, has a 37% stake in Alibaba that could be worth more than $60 billion. But Chairman Masayoshi Son, an Alibaba director, reiterated that Softbank will hold its shares.

"Alibaba still has lots of growth opportunities inside China. But overseas is yet another horizon of opportunities. This IPO will give lots of opportunities for expansion."

Yahoo! could eventually be among Friday's biggest Alibaba winners. The company has previously said it plans to unload about 5% of its 22.4% Alibaba stake.

Canter Fitzgerald's Youssef Squali raised his target price to $43 from $39, saying Yahoo! should gross about $9.5 billion from the Alibaba stock sale. But Yahoo! was down 4.3% to $40.25 in afternoon trading.

Squali also initiated coverage of Alibaba with a buy rating and set a $90 price target.

On its first day of trading, London-based stock research firm Atlantic Equities initiated coverage of Alibaba with an "overweight" rating and a price target of $100 per share.

"With a roughly 80% (marketshare) of Chinese e-commerce, the company has established a strong position in this rapidly growing market, which we expect it to maintain despite ongoing intense competition," said Atlantic's James Cordwell.

Others aren't so sure Alibaba is a buy at current levels.

"There is no way of knowing," says money manager Gary Kaltbaum of Kaltbaum Capital Management. "It is random on whether it is buyable up here."

But Kaltbaum stresses that the strong IPO is a sign that investor enthusiasm is rising along with the IPO's pre-market price hype. "We have a greed based market this second, not fear based, so I wouldn't take higher prices off the table," he says, adding that buying shares at these high levels are "risky."

"There is a ton of stock that could be sold at any time by insiders, and very often, frothy opens get sold off," Kaltbaum says.

At current levels, Alibaba's valuation is less attractive than it was at the offering price, says Alan Skrainka, chief investment officer at Cornerstone Wealth Management.

"Alibaba seems to have a sustainable business model with a very bright future," says Skrainka. "The real question is what is the proper valuation for the company. At $68, the stock traded at 29 times forward (12-month) earnings projections. At $90, the stock trades at 38 times forward earnings. That's a pretty full valuation for Alibaba. Anyone buying today will likely need to hold for the long term to make money in the stock."


Dorweiler warns that Alibaba shares should be volatile going forward.

"It will be interesting to see if there's a bit of a correction in the stock price. A lot of people are steering clear for several days or weeks, just to see what happens," Dorweiler says. "The company is a winner with global growth potential. It could be a $100 stock sooner than later. But there could be volatility over the next few trading sessions."

Alibaba's IPO debut roars, shares soar 33%

 

[jkroo]

I am thinking to post the article about Alibaba.

It's the first day that the group is listed in NYSE, and the market value is more than $170 billion that is more than some country's GDP.

It's so huge!

BAT GO!

 

[jkroo]

The ever biggest IPO that also create hundreds of millionaires.

This guy - Ma Yun and his team is a legend.

 

[DoTell]

I am thinking to post the article about Alibaba.

It's the first day that the group is listed in NYSE, and the market value is more than $170 billion that is more than some country's GDP.

It's so huge!

BAT GO!

Alibaba's IPO raised $21.8 billion in a single day, that's a record. India received $28 billion FDI in year 2013 as a country! (India received $28bn FDI in 2013: UNCTAD - The Times of India )

Hammer it down man. Let's make some money

 

[steelseries779]

 

[dlclong]

Overnight, tens of thousands of millionaires birth in the world
Ma Yun became the richest man in China, Son Jeong-ui became the richest man in japan.
Alibaba became the world's second largest Internet companies.
Alibaba Headquarters employees 11,000 people, per capita share of $1820000.