Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group today increased the proposed price range for its upcoming IPO from $60-$66 per share to $66-$68 per share. At the high end of its revised range, the company would raise more than $21.76 billion from the offering, and have an initial market cap of approximately $167.6 billion (for context, Amazon (AMZN) closed trading today with a $155 billion market cap). It did not increase the number of shares being offered, as Facebook (FB) did in the run-up to its 2012 IPO.
Alibaba kicked off its IPO road-show last week, and reportedly filled its subscription book after just two days. It is expected to price the offering this Thursday night, and begin trading the following morning on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol BABA.
There had been some speculation that Alibaba would increase its upper price range to $70 per share, which it still has time to do. The company also could maintain its current range and still price higher (or lower) on Thursday night.
At $21.76 billion, Alibaba would have the largest U.S. IPO of all-time, plus the largest tech IPO of all-time. But it still would fall a bit short of the largest global IPO mark of $22.1 billion, which was set by Hong Kong-listed Agricultural Bank of China:
