E-commerce in China has been thrust into the global limelight, as people all over the world eye Alibaba’s public offering, which is expected to rank as the largest tech IPO to date.
Ahead of Alibaba’s IPO though, its rival JD.com announced that it has raised $1.78 billion in its US IPO. The online retailer sold 93,685,620 American Depositary Shares at $19 each and will be making its debut when NASDAQ opens for trading later today. Bloomberg says that this makes JD the largest ever offering of a Chinese internet firm’s IPO in New York.
However, this will almost certainly be eclipsed soon by Alibaba, known more often than not as the e-commerce giant in China.
Alibaba filed for its US IPO earlier this month, reporting a massive 618 million users and $5.55 billion in revenue for fiscal 2013, which ran through March 31. According to the filing, Alibaba is seeking to raise as much as $1 billion, though many believe the final figure could be more than $20 billion instead.
The rivalry between Alibaba and JD is becoming more heated because Tencent, one of the three Internet giants in China alongside Alibaba and search giant Baidu, recently cozied up with JD.
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In March, Tencent took a 15 percent stake in JD, with Bloomberg pinning the deal at $214.7 million. Tencent is also further subscribing at IPO price for an additional 5 percent of JD, which the company revealed today amounts to $1.3 billion from the issuance of 138,014,720 Class A ordinary shares.
With all the excitement bubbling over e-commerce in China as they list in the US, this year looks set to be one in which the three Chinese internet giants increasingly compete against one another to get consumers to spend more on their respective platforms.
Headline image via PRNewsFoto
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