Alibaba Group

	Alibaba Group
Simplified Chinese	??????
Traditional Chinese	??????
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	?l?b?b? Jítuán
IPA

Alibaba Group Holding Limited
Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: BABA
ISIN	US01609W1027
Industry	Internet
Founded	4 April 1999; 19 years ago; Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Founder	Jack Ma; Peng Lei
Headquarters	Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jack Ma; (executive chairman); Joseph Tsai; (executive vice chairman); J. Michael Evans; (president); Daniel Zhang; (CEO);
Products	E-commerce, online auction hosting, online money transfers, mobile commerce
Services	Online shopping
Revenue	CN¥250.266 billion (US$39.898 billion, 2018)
Operating income	CN¥69.314 billion (US$11.050 billion, 2018)
Net income	CN¥61.412 billion (US$9.791 billion, 2018)
Total assets	CN¥717.124 billion (US$114.326 billion, 2018)
Total equity	CN¥436.438 billion (US$69.578 billion, 2018)
Number of employees	66,421 (March 31, 2018)
Subsidiaries	Alibaba.com, Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao F.C., Taobao, Tmall, UCWeb, Daraz, AliExpress, Juhuasuan.com, 1688.com, Alimama.com, Ant Financial, Cainiao, Lazada, Youku Tudou, Alibaba Cloud
Website	www.alibabagroup.com

Coordinates: 30°11?31.12?N 120°11?9.79?E? / ?30.1919778°N 120.1860528°E? / 30.1919778; 120.1860528

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Chinese: ????????????; pinyin: ?l?b?b? Jítuán Kòngg? Y?uxiàn G?ngs?) is a Chinese multinational e-commerce, retail, Internet, AI and technology conglomerate founded in 1999 that provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals, as well as electronic payment services, shopping search engines and cloud computing services. It owns and operates a diverse array of businesses around the world in numerous sectors, and is named as one of the world's most admired companies by Fortune.

At closing time on the date of its initial public offering (IPO) - US$25 billion - the world's highest in history, 19 September 2014, Alibaba's market value was US$231 billion. As of June 2018, Alibaba's market cap stood at US$542 billion. It is one of the top 10 most valuable and biggest companies in the world. In January 2018, Alibaba became the second Asian company to break the US$500 billion valuation mark, after Tencent. As of 2018, Alibaba has the 9th highest global brand value.

With operations in over 200 countries, Alibaba is the world's largest retailer, one of the largest Internet and AI companies, one of the biggest venture capital firms, and one of the biggest investment corporations in the world. Its online sales and profits surpassed all US retailers (including Walmart, Amazon and eBay) combined since 2015. It has been expanding into the media industry, with revenues rising by triple percentage points year on year. It also orchestrated China's Singles' Day into the world's biggest online and offline shopping day, with its own sales reaching over US$25.4 billion on 11 November 2017.

Recently, Alibaba has outperformed major cloud players including Amazon, Microsoft and Google in public cloud revenue growth, achieving triple-digit percentage revenue growth year-on-year.

History

Founding and name

The company's name came from the character Ali Baba from the Arabian literature One Thousand and One Nights because of its universal appeal. As Jack Ma, one of the founders, explained:

"Taobao City", the main corporate campus for Alibaba Group at Xixi, Hangzhou.

Alibaba Binjiang Campus in Hangzhou, headquarters for Alibaba's B2B service.

One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said, "Do you know about Alibaba?" And she said yes. I said, "What do you know about?", and she said, "Open Sesame". And I said, "Yes, this is the name!" Then I went on to the street and found 30 people and asked them, "Do you know Alibaba?" People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China … they all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba – open sesame. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So … easy to spell, and globally known. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name "Alimama", in case someone wants to marry us!"

Brick and mortar stores

According to Li Chuan, a senior executive at Alibaba, the company was planning in 2013 to open a traditional brick and mortar retail outlets in partnership with Chinese real estate company Dalian Wanda Group. Additionally, Alibaba purchased a 25% stake in Hong Kong-based Intime Retail in early 2014. In early 2017, Alibaba and Intime's founder Shen Guojun agreed to pay as much as 19.8 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$2.6 billion) to take the store chain private. Alibaba's stake—28% from 2014's US$692 million investment—would rise to about 74% after the deal.

IPO

On 5 September 2014, the group—in a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission—set a US$60- to $66- per-share price range for its scheduled initial public offering (IPO), the final price of which would be determined after an international roadshow to gauge the investor interest in Alibaba shares to shareholders.

On 18 September 2014, Alibaba's IPO priced at US$68, raising US$21.8 billion for the company and investors. Alibaba was the biggest US IPO in history. On 19 September 2014, Alibaba's shares (BABA) began trading on the NYSE at an opening price of $92.70 at 11:55 am EST. On 22 September 2014, Alibaba's underwriters announced their confirmation that they had exercised a greenshoe option to sell 15% more shares than originally planned, boosting the total amount of the IPO to $25 billion.

Company timeline

In December 1999, Jack Ma and 17 other founders released their first online marketplace, named "Alibaba Online". From 1999 to 2000, Alibaba Group raised a total of US$25 Million from SoftBank, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and some other institutions.

In December 2001, Alibaba.com achieved profitability. In May 2003, Taobao was founded as a consumer e-commerce platform. In Decem

Release Date :

12:00am on Thursday 1st January 1976