Chapter 1006 Alibaba goes public

Shortly after Cameron's cabinet reshuffle, on July 18, Alibaba was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States, with the stock trading code "BABA".

This time, the bell ringing ceremony for Alibaba's listing was quite special. There was no presence of Ma and senior executives at the ceremony, but eight ordinary customer representatives rang the bell, reflecting Alibaba's "customer first" concept.

It can be said that Alibaba's listing is highly anticipated, and its underwriters include Standard Chartered-Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, which are huge in scale.

The IPO issue price of Alibaba's stock was set at US$70, slightly higher than the original US$68. If the over-allotment plan is included, their maximum financing scale will exceed US$25 billion, setting a record for the highest financing of US stocks so far!

After the bell ringing ceremony, before the first transaction, Alibaba's stock went through 10 rounds of opening inquiries, and the price range gradually increased from US$80-83 to US$92-93.

Finally, nearly two and a half hours after the opening of the U.S. stock market, Alibaba's stock began to trade officially, with an opening price of $92.77, up 32.5% from the issue price.

At this point, Mr. Ma and the company's underwriters all showed smiles on their faces. After all, although investors were positive about Alibaba, a company that would create a history of U.S. stock financing, it was not until this moment that they could be sure that this listing was a great success. In the current market environment, it can also be said that it has strengthened the confidence of other technology companies to go public.

After the opening, Alibaba's stock price rose rapidly, approaching $100 in just a few minutes, at $99.95, which was also the highest price on the first day of Alibaba's listing.

Soon its stock price "dives", and after stabilizing, it continues to fall, and once fell below $90 to $88.95, but it soon recovered.

Since then, Alibaba's stock price has fluctuated between $91 and $93.

It rose near the close of the market, and finally closed at $93.92, up 34.17% from the issue price.

At this price, Alibaba's market value is close to $241.5 billion, just ahead of Google's $240 billion, making it the world's second largest Internet company after Woaw Technology ($320 billion).

Its market value also exceeds the sum of the other two companies, Penguin and Baidu, of the three Chinese Internet giants BAT.

It can be said that Alibaba's listing has created an amazing "wealth-making effect".

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, who received about $900 million in cash from the listing financing, still holds nearly 9% of the company's shares. This part of his shares alone, calculated at the closing price on the day of listing, is worth more than $21.7 billion, making Boss Ma successfully promoted to the new richest man in mainland China.

At the same time, it is conservatively estimated that Alibaba's internal employees will cash out on the day of the IPO, creating nearly 30 billionaires and thousands of millionaires and tens of millions of yuan.

Thanks to his investment in Alibaba, the net worth of Sun Zhengyi, founder and CEO of Japanese technology and telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, is close to $20 billion, making him the richest man in Japan.

Of course, the biggest winner is Barron, who holds approximately 912.95 million shares of Alibaba through DS Holdings and Rich23 Capital, accounting for approximately 35.5% of the total share capital of the company after listing!

These holdings are currently worth more than $85.7 billion, and with this part of assets alone, he has already ranked as the world's richest man!

Well, on the Forbes Global Rich List released on March 4 this year, Bill Gates ranked as the world's richest man with a personal wealth of $76 billion.

Thanks to his previous optimization of his industry holdings, most of his holdings were concealed. In this Forbes Global Rich List released this time, Barron ranked fifth on the rich list after Warren Buffett with "only" $57.5 billion in personal assets.

Alibaba's listing in the United States not only brought huge financial support to the company, but also increased its global visibility and influence. At the same time, Jack Ma also became the richest man in mainland China.

"Starting tomorrow, we will have a harder time. The whole world will pay attention to whether we are trustworthy or not. We raised trust in this IPO, not money. I hope everyone can live up to this trust and this dream!"

When Alibaba went public today, Ma and Alibaba Vice Chairman Cai Zhongxin and CEO Lu Zhaoxi had a video call with Alibaba employees, Ma said so.

Afterwards, he said in an interview with CNBC, a business and financial television network, that the Internet will change China...

"15 years ago, everyone doubted whether my team and I could survive. I tell you, we have always been confident. I admire many American companies. I want to change the business ecology and benefit society like them..."

There is no doubt that under the premise of Alibaba's outstanding performance on the first day, its stock underwriters chose to exercise the over-allotment right and could obtain more stock shares for sale.

As for the promise made by Barron to Ma to reduce the majority of Alibaba shares held by DS Holdings, because the shares they held did not participate in the listing and issuance of this IPO and had a 90-day lock-up period, they would not be able to start selling in the secondary market until the lock-up period expires.

Starting from the arrival of the 90-day lock-up period, DS Holdings holds a total of approximately 292.98 million Alibaba shares and will reduce its holdings to no less than 231.42 million shares within one year (accounting for 10% of Alibaba’s total share capital before the listing and additional issuance) ).

If calculated based on the closing price of Alibaba on its first day of listing, the value of these stocks that need to be reduced is as high as US$21.735 billion!

Of course, it is still unknown where Alibaba’s stock price will be by then, and their persistence cannot be concentrated in the short term, but will be carried out slowly over a long span. Although the stock price of Alibaba will be It will have an impact, but it will be controlled to a certain extent.

It is worth mentioning that at the moment when Alibaba is going public in the United States, Amazon, which has always been regarded as the reference for Alibaba’s valuation, has a market value of about US$150 billion, which has fallen significantly behind Alibaba. In fact, this time At that time, Alibaba’s market value was higher than Amazon and eBay combined…

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The main reason for this is that Alibaba does not have too strong competitors in the Chinese market at this time, and its position is even stronger. Alibaba's rapid growth and innovative business model attracted the attention of investors in 2014, and although Amazon It was also growing, but its market performance and profitability at that time were not as good as those of Alibaba.

For example, in the European market, Amazon’s market share has been suppressed by Argos Retail Group. Even in the North American market, Argos Retail Group used its stores and warehousing logistics system to expand its presence in North America after acquiring Costco. The e-commerce space begins to compete directly with Amazon…

In addition, traditional retailers including Wal-Mart have also begun to pay attention to online sales...

These have affected Amazon's revenue performance, making its future market expectations lower than those of Alibaba, which dominates the Chinese market, in the eyes of investors.