Alibaba Launches Investor Roadshow Ahead of IPO

By Ellen Huber

The world’s largest e-commerce company—China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.—yesterday launched ten days of investor meetings in advance of its record-breaking initial public offering (IPO), reports Bloomberg. The IPO—set to hit the trading floor on September 19—is predicted to raise $24 billion, which would make it the biggest IPO in history.

Alibaba’s pitches to potential investors—to be held throughout the United States and Asia—are set to run through September 18. Central topics will include global competition, mobile consumers, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), according a Wall Street Journal interview with Rob Sanderson of MKM Partners consulting.

Late last week, Alibaba set the price range of its IPO at $60 to $66 per share, according to the Journal article. The midpoint of this range would give Alibaba a value of $155 billion, making it worth far more than the current IPO record holder, Visa, which listed for $19.7 billion in March 2008.The Alibaba IPO would also tower over Facebook’s $16 billion listing, which took place in May 2012.

With control of almost 80 percent of China’s growing e-commerce market, Alibaba has ridden the wave of its anticipated IPO launch since it announced on March 16 that it would list in the United States.

(Photo by Prayitno via Flickr)