Reports: Alibaba Plans To Stop Taking IPO Orders Early

(RTTNews) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. plans to stop taking orders early from investors for its highly-anticipated initial public offering, according to media reports on Friday, citing people familiar with knowledge of the matter.

The Chinese e-commerce giant reportedly has sufficient demand to sell all the stock in the IPO at the high end of its current price range and therefore, plans to start closing the order books early.

Alibaba said in early September that it expects to set the price range of its IPO at $60 to $66 per American depositary share. The company expects to offer 320.1 million shares to investors, while the underwriters would be granted the right to buy up an additional about 48 million additional shares.

Alibaba and its bankers have reportedly decided to close order books on Tuesday, September 16, for U.S.-based investors and stop taking orders on September 17 from investors based in Asia and Europe.

Alibaba still plans to set a final price for the shares on Thursday, September 18, with trading to begin the next day, on September 19. The company plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "BABA".

The offering is expected to raise as much as $24 billion and would value the firm at $163 billion, but may exceed $250 billion once it starts trading. The sale could surpass Facebook Inc. (FB)'s $16.4 billion IPO.

The selling shareholders in the Alibaba IPO include Japanese telecommunications and Internet company SoftBank Corp (SFTBY, SFTBF), Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), and Alibaba founder and Chairman Jack Ma.

SoftBank is expected to cut its holding in Alibaba by 1.7 percent to 32.4 percent, while Yahoo is to reduce its stake by 10 percent from about 23 percent. Jack Ma will cut its stake to 7.8 percent from 8.8 percent.

Alibaba, which accounts for about 80 percent of all Chinese e-commerce activity, was co-founded in 1999 by former English teacher Jack Ma. The company has benefited from sustained economic growth in China and developed an all-encompassing retail ecosystem that ranges from payment systems to cloud computing services.

Alibaba operates China's largest online shopping destination, Taobao Marketplace; and third-party platform for brands and retailers, Tmall. It also operates Juhuasuan, a popular group buying marketplace in China.