Alibaba IPO might top out at $66 per share
There are a few big tech IPOs on the horizon expected to close before the end of 2014, yet it's all but certain none will be as big as Alibaba.
The Chinese e-commerce giant is now expected to price its initial public offering between $60 and $66 per share, according to the Wall Street Journal on Friday.
Aiming to raise more than $20 billion with its IPO, the latest estimate would put Alibaba's value somewhere close to $160 billion.
Alibaba filed its F-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in May following weeks of rumors and predictions about an IPO worth up to $20 billion.
The figure rounded out closer to a still-not-shabby $1 billion, although previous estimates have pegged Alibaba's worth to be around $168 billion, which would make it the most valuable Internet company after Google.
In June, the New York Stock Exchange confirmed Alibaba would be headed to its Wall Street trading floors under the ticker symbol "BABA."
Alibaba has been making a number of moves to bolster its bottom line while courting Wall Street as well as Silicon Valley, from stocking up on patents to opening the doors to a new cloud datacenter in Beijing.
Known in the US primarily for its association with Yahoo, Alibaba is an eBay-meets-Amazon and then some kind of business.
Alibaba owns Taobao Marketplace, China’s largest online shopping business, as well as Tmall, the country's largest third-party platform for brands and retailers. As boasted by the company itself in the F-1, "Alibaba is synonymous with e-commerce in China."
Most of Alibaba's revenue derives from online marketing and ads. Other revenue streams include membership and transaction fees, value-added services, and cloud services.