ALIBABA gave investors a closer look at the scale and growth of the Chinese e-commerce juggernaut in an initial public offering (IPO) prospectus filed yesterday, the first step in what could be the largest technology debut in history.

    Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which powers 80 percent of all online commerce in China, may raise more than US$15 billion, and could top the US$16 billion pulled in by Facebook Inc. when it listed in 2012.

    The bulk of the proceeds will go to Yahoo Inc., which bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005 for US$1 billion and which must sell more than a third of its current 22.6 percent stake through the IPO. Alibaba also plans to sell new shares, people familiar with the plans have said, to bulk up a cash war chest depleted by a rash of recent acquisitions.

    While the Alibaba brand is less well known in the United States than Internet companies such as Amazon.com and Facebook, the Chinese company’s listing has stirred the most excitement in Silicon Valley and Wall Street since Facebook’s record IPO. Alibaba will become the largest Chinese corporation to list in the United States.

    Alibaba will debut later this year in a market where high-flying tech stocks like Twitter and Amazon have fallen in recent weeks in a sell-off that has divided analysts and investors, reviving doubts about soaring tech valuations.

    Still, estimates of Alibaba’s market value have soared in recent months, to even beyond US$200 billion, underscoring Wall Street’s eagerness to take a crack at a massive Chinese company with robust growth.

    Alibaba handled more than 1.5 trillion yuan — about US$248 billion — of transactions for 231 million active users across its three main Chinese online marketplaces in 2013, more than Amazon and eBay Inc. combined. It did so with 20,884 full-time workers, fewer than eBay.

    “If it’s able to transport that kind of power to outside China, it has the potential to become a true global e-commerce powerhouse,” said Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics. “Everybody thought Amazon could do it, but now we have to re-think Amazon in the light of being the most successful company in that field in the United States — but not in the world.”

    Alibaba did not give any hints in its prospectus about potential plans for the U.S. e-commerce market. Analysts said it was unlikely Alibaba would adopt the model favored by Amazon, which sells goods directly to consumers using a sprawling network of warehouses.

    Alibaba, founded 15 years ago in a one-room apartment in Hangzhou and controlled by a 28-member partnership, boasts of building a company that will last “at least 102 years.”

    After the IPO, Alibaba said, the partnership will have the exclusive right to nominate a simple majority of the members of its board of directors.

    Alibaba operates an online messaging service as well as a cloud computing business, but more than 80 percent of its revenue comes from its Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan online marketplaces. Top items sold on Taobao include prepaid phone and game cards as well as lottery tickets, home furniture and baby products.

    Total revenue rose 62 percent to 18.75 billion yuan (US$3.01 billion) in the October-December period in 2013 from a year ago, while net income more than doubled to 8.27 billion yuan, according to the prospectus.

    Some analysts say Alibaba’s rapid pace of revenue growth may be unsustainable.

    “They got into the e-commerce space when there weren’t any other players in China,” said Forrester analyst Kelland Willis, adding Alibaba has been “losing market share year over year.”

    By 2020, online retail sales in China will reach US$420-US$650 billion, as much as the United States, Japanese, British, German and French markets combined, according to a recent analysis by McKinsey Global Institute. (SD-Agencies)