China’s online Goliaths prepare US public offerings

The Chinese Internet industry is coming of age, as some of its biggest players prepare to start new chapters as publicly traded companies — in the United States.

The biggest of them all, the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group, is aiming to file for an initial public offering in New York as soon as next month, people briefed on the matter said Friday. Several analysts value Alibaba at more than $130 billion, and many predict that its IPO may raise more than the $16 billion that Facebook fetched in its market debut nearly two years ago.

And Weibo, a major Chinese microblogging company seen as that country’s answer to Twitter, filed Friday for its own stock sale.

Should the two companies move forward with their plans, they could form the second wave of Chinese Internet IPOs, coming nearly a decade after Tencent and the search engine Baidu went public.

This year, JD.com, Alibaba’s principal rival in the e-commerce market in China, filed for its own US stock offering.

Unlike a wave of Chinese companies that sought US stock listings several years ago — some of which have since collapsed amid accounting scandals — these are Goliaths.

The latest crop of companies has also chosen to file in the United States.

Largely unchallenged by foreign competitors, the Chinese companies have come to dominate what is seen as the next frontier of the Internet. E-commerce has become especially important, as Chinese consumers increasingly flock to online marketplaces.

Despite being confined mainly to Chinese-speaking users, Weibo has become one of the most talked-about social networks in the world. It claimed 129.1 million monthly active users as of year-end, compared with Twitter’s 241 million.

Alibaba’s investment in Weibo last year valued the messaging service at about $3.3 billion. Although its prospectus Friday listed a fund-raising target of $500 million, the company may seek to raise significantly more.

But by far the most anticipated offering on Wall Street is Alibaba’s. Virtually every major investment bank has journeyed to Hong Kong to make its pitch to Alibaba’s management team.

While the company has yet to formally hire underwriters, two longtime advisers, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, are expected to play big roles, people briefed on the matter said.

The company has not yet decided whether it will list itself on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq market.

News Source: www.bostonglobe.com