Netizen: The Alibaba IPO

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

The Alibaba IPO

AliBaba (Photo credit: Stewf)

I never doubted Marissa Mayer's fundamentals as a tech executive, I think she is a trailblazer, but cynics claim 100% of her "success" at Yahoo can be attributed to Yahoo's stake in the Chinese tech giant Alibaba. Alibaba sells actual things. This is a signal that investors in America and other developed markets need to eye other emerging markets. There is an Alibaba waiting to happen in India, in Nigeria, in Brazil. And just like one Craig's List has fragmented into dozens of new, massive companies, and one inbox has fragmented into dozens of massive companies, Facebook among them (since you shared pictures over email before Facebook came along), I think Alibaba itself is a signal the Chinese ecommerce market can be broken up into smaller, more well-defined pieces. Alibaba's number one thing is ecommerce. There is a lesson. That you need a local approach to ecommerce in unique markets like China, and homegrown companies are best served. Other than founding Yahoo, investing early in Alibaba might be Jerry Yang's major masterstroke in life.

The Chinese are coming!

Alibaba Files to Go Public in US IPO of E-Commerce Giant

Founded by former English teacher Jack Ma, 49, in a Hangzhou apartment, Alibaba started with a few dozen items for sale. Alibaba’s market value is estimated at $168 billion, bigger than 95 percent of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index -- and the most valuable Internet company after Google Inc....... Alibaba now provides various marketplaces for buyers and sellers, as well as services that help them conduct their businesses. Taobao Marketplace, founded in 2003, enables millions of individuals and small businesses to sell products. Tmall.com operates as a virtual shopping mall, with retailers and brands offering products. Alibaba’s other businesses include Juhuasuan, a flash-sales model, and eTao, a shopping search engine.

Alibaba’s Massive U.S. IPO Could Top Facebook’s Debut

Last year, the Chinese e-commerce business that is part-owned by Yahoo handled $248 billion in transactions, more than Amazon and eBay combined. ..... If successful, Alibaba’s IPO could eventually value the company at substantially more than $150 billion ...... a windfall for Yahoo, which owns 24% of the e-commerce giant...... dominates the Chinese e-commerce market, powering four-fifths of all online commerce in that country ..... the company also operates a digital payments service and a cloud computing business..... Alibaba accounts for about 75% of Yahoo’s valuation ...... At $200 billion, Alibaba would be worth more than U.S. tech titans Facebook and Amazon, but it would still trail Apple and Google, the world’s two most valuable technology companies. ..... Last year, Alibaba handled $248 billion in online transactions ... more than Amazon and eBay combined. ....... Alibaba’s meteoric growth has been powered by economic and demographic trends in China, including the ongoing emergence of a large, tech-savvy middle class. In its IPO filing, Alibaba cited China’s population of 1.35 billion people, including 618 million Internet users. The company said there are 500 million mobile Internet users and 302 million Internet shoppers in China. ..... There is less of a retail culture in China, ie. ‘Let’s go shopping on Sunday,’ ..... “The bottom line is that Yahoo’s stock continues to be driven by Alibaba results”

Yahoo’s Alibaba Stake Is Valued at $26 Billion

its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, another Asian asset where it has a stake estimated at $9 billion..... Together, those holdings are worth about $35 billion, just under Yahoo’s current market capitalization of $36.7 billion. ...... Yahoo paid $1 billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba in 2005 and in 2012 Alibaba agreed to repurchased more than $7 billion in shares. Yahoo now owns 22.6%, according to Alibaba, and is required to sell 208 million shares in the IPO, worth $10.4 billion based on the most recent fair value. ..... Alibaba paid Yahoo $561 million in 2012 to license its intellectual property

With Alibaba IPO filing, pressure mounts on Yahoo

Marissa Mayer has dramatically changed the story line at Yahoo during her nearly two years as CEO ..... But even as Mayer has moved Yahoo away from under the cloud of worry which dogged it for so long, she'll soon be under growing pressure to prove that the company's turnaround is for real and not simply the result of a brilliant investment decision almost a decade ago. ...... In 2005, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang led the company through an investment in the little-known Alibaba, ponying up $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in the company. Today, Alibaba is valued anywhere from $150-$250 billion. Yahoo currently owns a 22.6 percent stake in the company. After Alibaba's IPO, Yahoo could end up with $12 billion in cash on its balance sheet ........ the challenge Yahoo faces as it seeks to compete in all these areas is that the incumbents are some of the fiercest names in technology: Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and others. And without the security blanket of leaning on Alibaba's might during earnings reports, the pressure is on for Mayer to find something else to fill the void.

Alibaba's $1 billion IPO: The numbers to know

Known in the U.S. primarily for its association with Yahoo, Alibaba is an eBay-meets-Amazon and then some kind of business....... Most of Alibaba's revenue derives from online marketing and ads. Other revenue streams include membership and transaction fees, value-added services, and cloud services.