Rebirth of England.

Chapter 1006 Alibaba Goes Public
Shortly after Cameron’s cabinet reshuffle, on July 7, Alibaba was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States with the stock trading code “BABA”.

The bell ringing ceremony for Alibaba's listing this time was quite special. Boss Ma and senior executives were not present at the ceremony. Instead, eight ordinary customer representatives rang the bell, reflecting Alibaba's "customer first" philosophy.

It can be said that Alibaba's listing is highly anticipated, and its underwriters include Standard Chartered Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, which is huge in scale.

The IPO issue price of Alibaba's stock was set at US$70, slightly higher than the original US$68. If the over-allotment plan is included, their maximum financing scale will exceed US$250 billion, setting a record for the highest financing of US stocks to date!
After the bell ringing ceremony and before the first transaction, Alibaba's stock went through 10 rounds of opening inquiries, and the price range gradually increased from US$80-83 to US$92-93.

Finally, nearly two and a half hours after the U.S. stock market opened, Alibaba's stock began formal trading, opening at $92.77, up 32.5% from the issue price.

At this point, smiles appeared on the faces of Mr. Ma and the company's underwriters. After all, although investors had been positive about Alibaba, a company that would create history in U.S. stock financing, during the roadshow, it was not until this moment that they could be sure that this listing would be a great success. In the current market environment, it can also be said that it has strengthened the confidence of other technology companies to go public.

After the opening, Alibaba's stock price rose rapidly, approaching $100 in just a few minutes, closing at $99.95, which was also the highest price on Alibaba's first day of listing.

Soon its stock price "plunged", and after stabilizing it continued to fall, and at one point fell below $90 to $88.95, but it quickly recovered.

Since then, Alibaba's stock price has fluctuated between US$91 and US$93.

It moved higher near the closing time and finally closed at $93.92, up 34.17% from the issue price.

Based on this price, Alibaba's market value is close to US$2415 billion, just surpassing Google's US$2400 billion market value, becoming the world's second largest Internet company after Woaw Technology (US$3200 billion).

Its market value also exceeds the sum of the other two companies, Penguin and Baidu, of China's three Internet giants BAT.

It can be said that Alibaba’s listing has created an amazing “wealth-creating effect”.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, who received approximately $9 million in cash proceeds from the IPO financing, still personally holds nearly 9% of the company's shares. This portion of his shares alone, calculated based on the closing price on the day of listing, is worth more than $217 billion, making Boss Ma the new richest man in mainland China.

At the same time, it is conservatively estimated that Alibaba’s internal employees will cash out on the IPO day, creating nearly 30 billionaires and thousands of millionaires and tens of millions of dollars.

Thanks to his investment in Alibaba, Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Japanese technology and telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, has a net worth of nearly $200 billion, making him the richest man in Japan.

Of course, the biggest winner is Barron, who holds approximately 23 million shares of Alibaba through DS Holdings and Rich91295 Capital, accounting for approximately 35.5% of the company's total share capital after listing!

These holdings are currently worth more than $857 billion. Based on this asset alone, he has already been ranked as the richest man in the world!
Well, on the Forbes Global Rich List released on March 3 this year, Bill Gates ranked as the world's richest man with a personal fortune of $4 billion. Thanks to his previous optimization of his industry holdings, most of his holdings were hidden. In this Forbes Global Rich List, Barron ranked fifth after Warren Buffett with "only" $760 billion in personal assets.

Alibaba's listing in the United States not only brought huge financial support to the company, but also increased its global visibility and influence. At the same time, Jack Ma also became the richest man in mainland China.

"Starting tomorrow, our situation will be even more difficult, and the whole world will be watching whether we are trustworthy. What we raised in this IPO is not money, but trust. I hope everyone will live up to this trust and this dream!"

Boss Ma said this when he, Vice Chairman Cai Zhongxin and CEO Lu Zhaoxi had a video call with Alibaba employees when Alibaba went public today.

Later, he told CNBC, a business and financial television network, that the Internet would change China...

"15 years ago, everyone doubted whether my team and I could survive. I told everyone that we always had confidence. I admire many American companies. I want to be like them, change the business ecology and benefit society..."

There is no doubt that given the outstanding performance of Alibaba's stock price on the first day, its stock underwriters chose to exercise the over-allotment right and obtained more stock shares for sale.

As for the promise made by Baron to Mr. Ma to sell off most of the Alibaba shares held by DS Holdings, since the shares they hold did not participate in the IPO and have a 90-day lock-up period, they can only be sold in the secondary market after the lock-up period expires.

Starting from the expiration of the 90-day lock-up period, DS Holdings will reduce its holdings of Alibaba shares, totaling approximately 29298 million shares, by no less than 23142 million shares within one year (accounting for 10% of Alibaba's total share capital before its listing).

If calculated based on Alibaba’s closing price on the first day of listing, the value of these stocks that need to be sold is as high as US$217.35 billion!
Of course, it is still unknown where Alibaba’s stock price will be by then, and their persistence cannot be carried out in a concentrated manner in the short term, but will be carried out slowly over a fairly long span. Although it will have an impact on Alibaba’s stock price by then, it will also be controlled within a certain degree.

It is worth mentioning that when Alibaba went public in the United States, Amazon, which had always been regarded as a reference for Alibaba's valuation, had a market value of about US$1500 billion, which was far behind Alibaba. In fact, Alibaba's market value was higher than the sum of Amazon and eBay at that time...

The main reason for this is that Alibaba did not have strong competitors in the Chinese market at that time and its position was stronger. Alibaba's rapid growth and innovative business model in 2014 attracted the attention of investors. Although Amazon was also growing, its market performance and profitability were not as good as Alibaba at the time.

For example, in the European market, Amazon has been suppressed by Argos Retail Group in terms of market share. Even in the North American market, after acquiring Costco, Argos Retail Group used its stores and warehouse logistics systems to start competing directly with Amazon in the North American e-commerce field...

In addition, traditional retailers including Walmart have also begun to pay attention to online sales...

These have affected Amazon's revenue performance, making it less likely for investors to have a better future than Alibaba, which dominates the Chinese market.

(End of this chapter)