JD.com Inc. (NASDAQ: JD), a Beijing-based online direct retailer, began trading Thursday morning at an opening price of $22.07 a share, after selling 93.7 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at an initial public offering price (IPO) of $19 per ADS. The stock priced above its expected range of $16 to $18 as investor demand exceeded available shares by a factor of 15. One ADS equals two Class A ordinary shares.

The IPO price places a value of about $26 billion on JD.com, far below the value of $153 billion assigned to Alibaba back in February, but impressive nevertheless.

The company sold 69 million ADSs and selling shareholders sold 24.7 million. JD.com will not receive any proceeds from the shareholders’ sales. Underwriters, including Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, UBS, Allen & Co., Barclays, China Renaissance and Jefferies, have been granted an option on an additional 14 million ADSs.

The company faces formidable competition from both Alibaba’s Taobao.com and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN). JD.com has a deal with China’s other big online retailer, Tencent Holdings, that gives the company prominent access to Tencent’s mobile chat and messaging apps.

At the IPO price, JD.com received net proceeds of about $1.5 billion, if the underwriters exercise their overallotment option, and about $1.3 billion from a concurrent private placement of 138 million ordinary shares with a subsidiary of Tencent.

Shares traded at about $22.50 in the late morning, up about 18% over the IPO price.

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