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Alibaba To Launch IPO In Hong Kong, Expanding Pool Of Potential Investors

Alibaba will launch a public offering in Hong Kong that will be part of the company’s global offering of 500 million new ordinary shares and listing of its ordinary shares on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. Proceeds will be used to drive user growth and engagement, enable digital transformation among the company’s businesses and fund innovation and investments in the long term.

The move is being seen as a boost for Hong Kong after a week of escalating protests threatened to impact its financial reputation, according to BBC News. Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO, said that “we continue to believe that the future of Hong Kong remains bright.”

Listing in Hong Kong will do more than provide an influential vote of confidence in the city — it will let more users and stakeholders in Asia invest and participate in the company’s growth, expanding the retailer’s overall investor base and letting Alibaba tap new capital pools.

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“Alibaba is guided by our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere with the vision to be a good company that lasts for 102 years,” said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO in a statement. “We aim to serve global consumers, of which more than 1 billion will be Chinese consumers, and facilitate more than ¥10 trillion ($1.4 trillion) of consumption on our platform within the next five years by continuing to pursue our three strategic pillars of globalization, domestic consumption and big data powered by cloud computing Hong Kong is one of the world’s most important financial centers and we are grateful for the opportunity to participate in the future of Hong Kong.”

Alibaba announced the offering in the wake of a strong Singles Day that generated $12 billion of gross merchandise value in the first hour and $38.4 billion over 24 hours, breaking last year’s record. In comparison, Thanksgiving weekend e-Commerce sales reached a total of $20.8 billion in in 2018.

The new shares will be offered at no more than HK$188 ($23) and traded in board lots of 100 shares each. The retailer’s American depositary shares, which represent eight ordinary shares each, will continue to be listed and traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Shares of Alibaba stock on the NYSE were valued at $184.86 on Nov. 15, while Amazon shares were worth $1,749.42. It remains to be seen how trade volatility, the growing influence of Singles Day and other factors affect the two companies’ share prices.

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