New York - Alibaba Group has received enough demand for its initial public offering that it plans to stop taking orders for the record-breaking sale early, said people with knowledge of the matter.
The Chinese e-commerce giant has enough orders to sell all the shares offered in the IPO at the high end of the $60 (R659) to $66 per share offering range, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.
Alibaba has told the team running its sale that it will stop taking orders in Asia on September 17, which is a day sooner than scheduled.
For US investors that means final orders will need to be in by September 16, the people said.
Alibaba still plans to set a final price for the shares on September 18, with trading to begin the next day.
The banks running the sale expect to sift through orders this weekend, to decide if they can raise the price range for the IPO or increase the number of shares they plan to offer, the people said.
Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for Alibaba declined, to comment.
Record IPO
Alibaba and shareholders including Yahoo! are seeking to raise as much as $21.1 billion from the offering, valuing the company at as much as $162.7 billion, bigger than 95 percent of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
Executives are in the middle of a 10-day global roadshow to meet potential investors.
The first two events this week, in New York and Boston, drew as many as a thousand people, and executives including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, chief financial officer Maggie Wu and vice chairman Joe Tsai were queried about a range of topics from the company’s governance model to its profit margins, according to people who attended the meetings.
The executives will stop in San Francisco today before hosting an event in Hong Kong on Monday, according to a schedule obtained by Bloomberg.
The company plans to keep meeting investors as scheduled even after the order book is closed, one of the people said today.
Alibaba’s sale could exceed Visa Inc.’s $19.7 billion IPO in 2008, the biggest US initial offering to date.
Including an over-allotment option, Alibaba could raise as much as $24.3 billion, surpassing the existing global record held by Agricultural Bank of China, which raised $22.1 billion in sales in both Hong Kong and Shanghai in 2010.
The stock will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BABA.
Alibaba provides various marketplaces for buyers and sellers as well as services that help them conduct their businesses.
Taobao Marketplace, started in 2003, enables millions of individuals and small businesses to sell products.
Tmall.com provides a virtual shopping mall, with retailers and brands offering products, and Juhuasuan operates a flash-sales model.
The three sites accounted for 82 percent of Alibaba’s sales in the year through March. - Bloomberg News