Alibaba Sets IPO Terms Worth $24.3 Billion — or $160 Billion

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By Paul Ausick Updated Published
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Courtesy of Alibaba
China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Inc. has filed an amended Form F-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Friday afternoon offering a first look at some of the actual numbers we’ll be tossing around when the company’s initial public offering goes out the door.

According to the filing the IPO price range is set at $60 to $66 per American Depositary Share (ADS). Each ADS is equal to one ordinary share. At the midpoint of the expected range the company would raise $24.3 billion at a total valuation of $160 billion. If that price holds this IPO will be the biggest ever.

Alibaba will offer 320.1 million shares in the IPO, of which the company will sell 123.1 million shares and existing shareholders will sell the rest. Company founder and CEO Jack Ma is selling 12.75 million shares and reducing his stake in the company from 8.8% to 7.8%. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is selling 121.74 million shares, reducing its stake from 22.4% to 16.3%. The other major shareholder is Japan’s SoftBank which owns 797.74 million shares (34.1%) and is selling none of them.

Alibaba will have 2,465,005,966 ordinary shares outstanding after this offering (based on 2,341,929,035 ordinary shares outstanding immediately prior to this offering). The company showed in the filing that the number of ADSs outstanding immediately after this offering would be 320,106,100 ADSs (or 368,122,000 ADSs if the underwriters exercise in full their option to purchase additional ADSs), not including 128,417,070 of its ordinary shares, representing 5.2% of the outstanding ordinary shares immediately after this offering, that will not be subject to lock-up agreements and may be freely converted into ADSs from time to time.

Lead underwriters for the offering include Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citi. The underwriters have an option on an additional 48.02 million shares that would come from the company, Yahoo, Jack Ma, and Joe Tsai, another company official who owns 3.6% of Alibaba and will sell 4.25 million shares in the IPO, reducing his stake to 3.2%.

ALSO READ: 10 Brands That Will Disappear in 2015

Yahoo shares did rise by 1% on Friday to $39.59. Its 52-week trading range is $27.82 to $41.72, and Yahoo! Finance listed its market cap at the close on Friday as being $39.4 billion.

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About the Author Paul Ausick →

Paul Ausick has been writing for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.

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