The Chinese business-to-business (B2B)
and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce platform Alibaba has finally
filed for a US flotation (Initial Public Offering) today, due to list in
the near future in New York. Current analyst estimates pitch the
starting market value of the entire company at between $150bn and $200bn,
a massive public company by any standards and likely to represent the
largest technology IPO since Facebook came to market back in 2012.
The business, headed by former English
schoolteacher Jack Ma (no wonder that he speaks English so well!),
dominates business to business e-commerce transactions, typically
between suppliers and customers not only in China, but effectively
globally.
While a detailed description of all
Alibaba’s businesses is beyond the scope of this (short) article, there
is more detail to be found here on cnbc.com, for those who are interested in finding out more about the company.
Alibaba by the numbers
Just a few numbers to illustrate its 400lb gorilla-like presence in this technology transaction space:
- Over 1.5 trillion yuan, or $248bn in value of transactions executed over the last year through its 3 main marketplaces;
- 11.3 billion orders placed annually;
- 231 million annual active buyers;
- 8 million active sellers;
- 5 billion packages generated on their Chinese retail marketplace last year;
- $5.66bn of listed revenue for the 9 months to 2013 year-end;
- Net income (profit after tax) of $2.85bn for the same period.
This puts Alibaba ahead of Amazon plus
Ebay together in terms of numbers of buyers and volume of transactions,
according to Reuters! (Bear in mind that Amazon has a total market
capitalisation in the US of $135bn, while Ebay is worth over $64bn
currently).
Where could it be in the list of biggest listed companies?
At the upper estimate of a starting
market value of $200bn, Alibaba would be the 14th-largest company listed
in the US, between the bank JPMorgan and the telecoms company Verizon.
In the Technology sector, only Apple (market value of $512bn), Google
($350bn) and Microsoft ($323bn) would be larger. Note: at $200bn, it
would have a larger value than the technology grand-daddy IBM ($192bn
market value)!
Even at the lower estimate of $150bn,
Alibaba would sit at number 23 in the list of largest listed US
companies with the same market value as Facebook now, over 7 times more
than Twitter and 9 times more than Linkedin.
How to get exposure in Alibaba?
Please click on the link below to see how you can get exposure to Alibaba...
I was unaware with this that the company is leading in such a good prospect, although I have heard but was not sure about the facts.
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