Alibaba sets stock price at $68 on eve of IPO
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. set its stock price at $68 a share — the top of its range — on the eve of its initial public offering, meaning that it is set to raise more than $25 billion and that the company’s overall value is higher than Amazon.com’s.
Hotly anticipated for months, the Chinese Internet behemoth’s IPO has ignited the kind of frenzied investor interest that inflamed Facebook in 2012 and Twitter in 2013. During the company’s two-week international road show, institutional investors rushed to place orders for shares, prompting Alibaba to raise its price range.
On Thursday afternoon, Alibaba set its final price of $68 a share. That was higher than its initial price range of $60 to $66 a share. On Monday, it raised its price range to $66 to $68.
Alibaba is often compared to EBay and PayPal, but its interests are much wider. They include banking, maps, cloud computing, an online music service and TV and film production.
It operates Taobao, Alibaba’s biggest website and China’s largest consumer-to-consumer online shopping platform, and Tmall, China’s largest third-party platform for brands and retailers. The company also has a stake in microblogging platform Weibo, which itself went public in the United States this year.
Alibaba was founded in 1999. Yahoo Inc. was an early investor and owns slightly less than a quarter of the company.
Times staff writer Joe Bel Bruno contributed to this report.
For more news, follow @raablauren, Paresh Dave and Andrea Chang on Twitter.
