Alibaba Hits the Road to Promote Huge IPO
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba kicked off its IPO roadshow on Monday in New York. Hundreds of institutional investors poured into the Starlight room at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
Over the course of the next ten days, Alibaba will be pitching its business model to potential investors in about 100 meetings throughout the world. In addition to New York, the roadshow will take place in Boston, Baltimore, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Kansas City and Chicago.
Alibaba plans to complete its initial public offering on Thursday, Sept. 18 and begin trading the following day. The company plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker “BABA.”
In what may be the biggest U.S. IPO ever, likely exceeding Visa’s $19.7 billion offering, Alibaba is expected to be a bellwether of the IPO market. If the stock performs poorly, the window to go public may close for several weeks, which happened after Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB) troubled debut in 2012.
Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) investors will also be closely watching the performance of Alibaba. The company currently holds a 22% stake, which will be reduced to 16% following the IPO.
This has been an active year for Chinese IPOs listing in the United States, with others including social media service Weibo (NASDAQ:WB) and e-commerce site JD.com (NASDAQ:JD). JD.com has performed strongly and Weibo’s stock has fluctuated.