<story><title>Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/business/dealbook/alibaba-raises-218-billion-in-initial-public-offering.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>skuhn</author><text>Alibaba going for a higher selling price just makes the continued undervaluing of Yahoo itself increasingly hilarious. At some point, I would think someone will want to buy them for all of this free money they have sitting around.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  YHOO market cap : 42.3bn
  + liabilities : 3.7bn
  = 46bn (to own outright)
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Meanwhile:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Cash on hand = 1.1bn
  + Other assets = 15.3bn
  + Cash from Alibaba sale = 8.3bn
  + Value of remaining Alibaba stock = 22bn
  + Value of Yahoo Japan stock = 9bn
  = 55.7bn (of value, if you can unlock it)
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
So simply by buying them, firing everyone and selling everything in a firesale, without even cashing those checks from advertisers, you can make $9.7bn. Seems like a sweet deal.</text></comment>
<story><title>Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/business/dealbook/alibaba-raises-218-billion-in-initial-public-offering.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>bane</author><text>Gosh....that&amp;#x27;s barely more than WhatsApp. Woulda done better selling it to Facebook.&lt;p&gt;More seriously, the Economist put a valuation at $55-$120b. This puts it at $168b. Or 9 WhatsApps. The IPO was expected to raise $20b, so this is really good.&lt;p&gt;It took 3 years after founding in 1998 to reach profitability.&lt;p&gt;It defies most conventional notions of a startup, despite having started in somebody&amp;#x27;s apartment. It&amp;#x27;s unbelievably unfocused, it does pretty much every kind of business you can do on the Internet.&lt;p&gt;It might be one of the first Asian-style conglomerates to be born on the Internet.&lt;p&gt;There are plans for it to open brick and mortar stores.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Alibaba_Group&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>