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Alibaba's US IPO Could Top $20 Billion
mpicpp writes with a snippet from Businessweek: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is seeking to raise as much as $21.1 billion in its initial public offering, in what could be the largest sale of new stock in the U.S. ever. The Chinese company and shareholders including Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO:US) plan to sell 320.1 million American depositary shares for $60 to $66 apiece, according to a regulatory filing today (BABA:US). At the high end of that range, the offering would surpass Visa Inc.'s $19.7 billion IPO in March 2008 and give the company a market value of $162.7 billion. Alibaba's executives are now able to meet fund managers to build demand for the IPO and they plan to begin the roadshow in New York next week, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The Hangzhou-based company has garnered years of attention for its scale — with 279 million active buyers in the year through June — and its exposure to a growing Internet consumer base in China.
If you aren't buying with the initial purchase prior to public offering, you get scammed. That is where all the money is made. Minimum purchase is usually $200,000-$1,000,000.
Once you know that, IPOs are less exciting.
All I know is that whenever any of my searches turn up links in Alibaba the results are worthless. I have to specifically exclude them to get anything useful. I could not care less how this plays out.
Hey, you know where might be a good place to get some Chinese biotech researchers for cheap? Alibaba!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Once it starts affecting rich white folks people will "find" for a cure immediately.
Ebola is not going to spread outside Africa, because soap and hand sanitizer are enough to reduce the transmission rate to about 0%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gweilo
The article doesn't mention who the 40 thieves are. I suggest they start by looking at the CFO and possibly the CEO and the board of directors.
*ducks*
You beat me to it, 'cause I paused to look it up. He was a woodcutter, not the thieves' leader. The wanted to kill him because he knew how to get their treasure.
Not that that version of the story is particularly reasurring for an IPO either...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
'cause they aren't getting our money fast enough yet?
Re #2, Teh Beeb or someone on the telly said that the IPO was already for a front company, 'cause foreigners aren't allowed to own Chinese companies.
Also said some potential investors are shy because it's not clear whether / how long China will tolerate the kind of workaround set up for the IPO.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Only a matter of time before the Chinese government takes over Alibaba, or sues because of "antitrust" or whatever other reason it can think of to get its cut. Either way, how can owning part of a Chinese business be a good investment, unless you are former/current PLA or a wig wearer in the Communist party?
I wouldn't waste my money.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
I tried to source items from sellers on Alibaba. I really did. Unfortunately, the site looks like a year 1 beta run my morons who don't know what they're doing and have never even heard the term professionalism. Their e-mails are basically scam spam. Every single seller who gave me a quote turned out to be a scammer. Alibaba doesn't give a shit. They do nothing to stop it besides pretending to certify them as gold sellers. If you invest in Alibaba, you might as well put money in Facebook and Apple because apparently you like disastrous Titanic-caliber corporate meltdowns. Investing in companies because they're making money when all their users hate them is so beyond stupid.
Quick correction - foreigners CAN own Chinese companies. In fact, I own one - a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise (called a "woofy"). You can own a company in China; what you cannot do is sell OR EVEN OFFER stock or options of a foreign company to any Chinese national. Meaning that foreign companies who provide stock options to their employees in the US or other countries cannot do that for their Chinese employees. That's about the only difference, however.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
How'd that soap and water work out for all those doctors then? You won't find a person better trained to wash their damned hands....
That's not completely true. My previous employer gave our Shanghai employees stock, although they had to sell it immediately.
"about 0%" means that it isn't 0%. And these people are surrounded by infected people. Who may not have used soap or hand sanitizer anyway.
It's the same thing as herd immunity: If everyone disinfects, then you're good. If a fraction disinfects, then even that fraction is at risk simply by being surrounded by infection sources.
The Internet bubble is already bursting, with mass layoffs all over the valley. On top of that, the "China growth" story is also cold and dead, with bad debts soaring across Asia.
This has the makings of a massive flop, but the news media is ecstatic about this IPO despite widespread reporting on both bubbles having burst already.
Short this piggy.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Well, kind of like how people are working without work visas. Just because it is happening does not make it legal.
Then that was actually illegal. The ONLY stock that can be given to Chinese nationals, working in China, is that of a company publicly traded on a Chinese stock exchange. No other stock transaction is actually legal. Now, many do it anyway (hey, TIC - This Is China), but it is illegal.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Amazon and ebay mostly sells products from China anyway. Most of what I buy on Ebay is just from resellers of products from Chinese sources. But Alibaba has cheaper more direct access to the real sources of those products, so can sell with less markup. And once Alibaba gets established in the US market there will be less need for the producers of the products to deal with Amazon.
Amazon and ebay ought to be scared.
All I see here is a bunch of hate for Alibaba. I do not understand it. Alibaba is basically the chinese/hong kong version of ebay. I buy stuff off their all the time and it's great. But you have to know what it is to get any use out of it. It's mostly grey market and refurbed stuff. Also, if it's shipping from Hong Kong it's going to take about 2 weeks to get to you. If it's mainland china, it can literally take 2 months. It's not just for cheap stuff, there are things you can get on there that just aren't sold in the US.
As a hobby I build a lot of stuff... electronics, tools, whatever... I can get prefabbed circuit boards off there for a few dollars. For example, a few years ago I built my own stereo, and wanted it to have bluetooth. I got a blutooth receiver board and a D/A converter for it for about $15, and that sort of thing just didn't exist in the US at the time.
Every seller I've dealt with on there's been great. I've not gotten ripped off. I've returned things, gotten support, etc... I'm sure there are bad sellers on there, I've not run into one though.
Our last huge internet-related IPO pulled in several craptons of money for a company that has no product and only functions to waste time and sell users' private data. Alibaba at least has a product and does a useful service. Apparently having an actual business plan is no longer important to having a successful IPO if you're an online company?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yeah, yeah, governments collude with industry, and rich white people ride on top, but please retreat a step or two from tinfoil hat country. You imply a cure is being withheld, whereas the WHO is actively working on a vaccine now, and is selecting the best treatments to apply.
Lower levels of funding are *not* the same as withholding a cure. One is related to self-interest, and the other is conspiracy to let people die.
Yeah, I remember that original Popeye cartoon. That line seemed funny then, but I was 6.
Quote of the day at the bottom of the page (at least for me):
Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. -- Thomas Jefferson
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
I'm sure on alibaba you could buy 25,000 different cures for Ebola, each costing 54 cents per thousand.
This is a common fallacy for poorly educated Americans and others: while much of huge world lives in "unsanitary conditions", that doesn't mean what it thinks it means. It doesn't mean people are unhygienic, I.e. They don't wash their hands after using the bathroom. It means the water is poopy and the food is spoiled. There' little to no preventative medical care, making people susceptible to disease, and there's too much overcrowding. This is how diseases like cholera and Ebola spread.
Also some research subjects...
Our last huge internet-related IPO pulled in several craptons of money for a company that has no product and only functions to waste time and sell users' private data.
I'm not sure which company you're referring to. Because if it's Facebook (FB), its product is space on its users' screens, and it sells only aggregate data, not personally identifying information, to its advertisers.
What do they make, do? I've herd of the name once before I though it was a movie tidal lol.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Ali Baba and it's sister consumer site, Ali Express, are aptly named to recall the famous arabian theives. I've bought lots of items on ali express and my experience is that anything above $40 for sale is going to involve you losing your money to a thief. Things like Suunto watches sell there under $100 but guess what, they are either counterfeits or you never get what you order. Same with Seagull brand watches. It's a theives market. Sure Ali baba has dispute resolution mechanism but the theives know how to work this to their advantage. A typical transaction goes like this. You buy something and you get a tracking number. The item never arrives. You check the tracking number and it's a real tracking number and it shows the item arrive but was deliver to some other city. You file a dispute. The thief ("merchant") offers you a $20 discount for your inconvenience and promises to reship it. If you accept this offer then you close the dispute and cannot re-open it. Needless to say the item never arrives. The tracking number is just one the thief recycled from some other past shipment to satisfy the alibaba purchase tracking. If you are clever enough not to accept the $20 offer then what happens is the dispute goes back and forth with the theif saying he's out his product and could you please agree to split the cost. If he's lucky you walk the time for the transaction past the Alibaba protection period. If not you remeber to escalate it. Then theres a month or more of incommunicado with the Ali baba site where they weigh your claims of non-arrival with the theifs attempts to seem conciliatory. Perhaps alibaba refunds your money but you don't know till one day it just happens.
I've been down this road so many times with "almost but not quite too good to be true" that this is the norm not the exceptions. The theives know that you know that somethings are too good to be true. so they price they scam appropriately. For example, often one theif will have a dozen different IDs on alibaba and then will sell the same suunto watch for a spectrum of prices. He's effectively titrating for the chumps wariness level. Exactly how much below MFG retail do your antennas go up verus your own greed to get the best deal. So you fool yourself by picking the seller with the price you are willing to believe. But they are the same guy.
Alibaba closes down the theif sometimes, but a week later they pop up with the exact same scam.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.