6 Stocks Portfolio Managers Are Selling to Fund New Alibaba Stakes

By Jon C. Ogg Updated Sep 16, 6:37AM EDT · Published Sep 15, 3:05PM EDT

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The upcoming Alibaba IPO is going to instantly create another instant mega-cap stock for portfolio managers to invest in. The problem that many of these portfolio managers will face is a complicated dilemma — what high-flying stocks do they sell to raise funds to invest heavily into Alibaba? The answer may simply be nothing short of “all of them.”

Alibaba is expected to have a market capitalization rate of roughly $160 billion. With reports of more shares being sold off, the reality is that the market cap could be even a tad larger. Another issue is that there may be “only” $20 billion to $25 billion worth of stock that is actually sold, unless the deal demand brings Alibaba insiders to sell even more shares.

The long and short of the matter is that technology funds, index funds, and other hedge funds and mutual funds (and even ETF managers) are going to have a high demand for the likes of Alibaba. The flip side is that they are likely selling shares of many other high-profile internet and technology stocks that have enjoyed big gains of late to pay for their IPO allocations and whatever they want to buy in the post-IPO trading.

24/7 Wall St. has identified six of the top high-flyers that have large market caps where we think major holders are selling shares to raise funds to pay for Alibaba share purchases. One caveat — speculators and stock gamers may simply be selling these in anticipation that fund managers will lighten up in these stocks to make room for Alibaba.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) stock was down roughly 5% at $73.65 in Monday afternoon trading, versus a 52-week trading range of $42.43 to $78.36. The company’s market cap is $191 billion, so Monday’s drop represented more than $9 billion in market cap that was removed from the market value. This stock was up as high as $77.25 in Monday morning. Investors in Facebook have made serious money if they got in any time during the negative post-IPO troubled period in the weeks and months after it came public. Interestingly enough, Facebook is one that was named as expecting index buyers ahead of the S&P 500 rebalancing.

Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) shares were down 4% at $457.18 in Monday afternoon trading, against a 52-week trading range of $282.80 to $489.29. The company has a market cap of $27 billion, so this drop represented roughly a $1 billion loss in value from the market cap. This share price was up as high as $477.12 earlier in the day. Netflix has risen so much that most analyst target prices have only recently caught up to the current share price.

Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) traded down 6.2% to $48.88 in Monday afternoon trading, versus a 52-week trading range of $29.51 to $74.73. The company’s market cap is $29 billion, so Monday’s drop represented almost $2 billion in market cap that was lost from the market value. The shares traded as high as $51.93 in Monday morning’s session. A rise of 50% from the lows, and a bit more, has certainly given portfolio managers cover to unload stock at a profit — particularly at about 150-times expected 2015 earnings.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares were down 3.4% at $319.91 in Monday afternoon trading, compared to a 52-week trading range of $284.38 to $408.06. The company’s market cap is $147 billion, so Monday’s decline represented roughly $5 billion in market cap that was taken out of the market value. On Monday morning, Amazon’s stock was up as high as $331.33. Many investors have a hard time thinking of Alibaba as anything but competition for Amazon, so taking some money off of the Bezos table when Bezos could care less about profitability is not a stretch of the imagination.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) stock traded down 2.4% at $50.91 in Monday afternoon trading, versus a 52-week trading range of $48.06 to $59.70. The company has a market cap of $63 billion, so Monday’s drop in share prices represented about $1.5 billion in market cap that was removed from the market value. This stock was up as high as $52.29 in Monday morning. What is so interesting about selling eBay is that eBay has become an internet value stock, with no high-beta valuation, and it could become a special situation if it decided to separate PayPal from the business.

LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) is another one which has been seeing selling on Monday, with shares down 7% at $209.20 in late-day trading. The 52-week range is $136.02 to $255.85. Having a market cap of $25.7 billion after Monday’s drop implies that it has lost close to $1.8 billion in market cap in one day. LinkedIn may not have much actual overlap with Alibaba, but then again Facebook may not either. This stock was as high as $224.50 this morning.

Without considering any rounding of numbers in the one-day market cap erosion, these six stocks have seen close to $20 billion in combined market cap erosion in just one trading session. That is almost enough to pay for the entire expected share sale in Alibaba’s expected float. Another consideration for index selling is that another S&P 500 Index rebalancing is taking place in a few days as well.

About the Author Jon C. Ogg →

Jon Ogg has been a financial news analyst since 1997. Mr. Ogg set up one of the first audio squawk box services for traders called TTN, which he sold in 2003. He has previously worked as a licensed broker to some of the top U.S. and E.U. financial institutions, managed capital, and has raised private capital at the seed and venture stage. He has lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as New York and Chicago, and he now lives in Houston, Texas. Jon received a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance at University of Houston in 1992. a673b.bigscoots-temp.com.