Bottom line: Ant Financial is likely to get a low valuation from its new private placement due to the exclusion of foreign investors, but could see the figure reach up to $70 billion by the time of its 2017 IPO if it can rapidly build up its new services.
SOEs squeeze Ant Financial’s valuation
Yet another report has come out about an ongoing private placement by Ant Financial, saying the financial services affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) is now planning a domestic IPO in 2017. That’s a little later than was indicated in previous reports, which were probably a little too optimistic about a company whose various businesses are mostly less than 2 years old.
But the more interesting element in this recent flurry of reports has been what valuation the new private placement will bring for Ant, which is financially separate from the New York-listed Alibaba. Some of the earlier reports indicated Ant could be valued at up to $50 billion, which admittedly looks quite optimistic for a firm at its stage of development. But now the latest reports are bringing the number down sharply, saying the new funding will value Ant at between $35 billion and $40 billion. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Alibaba’s Ant Financial unit is likely to get a strong valuation with a planned new private placement, and will embark on a series of high-profile moves before making a multibilllion-dollar IPO next year.
Ant Financial eyes 2016 IPO
Alibaba’s (NYSE: BABA) high-profile spat with Beijing is finally starting to subside, paving the way for the company’s affiliated financial unit, Ant Financial, to move into the headlines with word of plans for a major new fund-raising. But anyone holding Alibaba stock shouldn’t get too excited about Ant, which is separate from the listed company and whose rapid rise will only benefit Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
At the same time, other media reports are saying that Internet giant Tencent (HKEx: 700) has formally cleansed its popular WeChat mobile messaging platform of a holiday red-envelope feature from Alipay, Ant Financial’s most valuable asset. That development isn’t a surprise, but it does spotlight one of several major challenges that Ant will face as it tries to carve out a profitable place for itself in China’s fast-evolving financial services sector. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: The piracy scandal rocking Alibaba will blow over in a few weeks with minimal longer-term impact, though the company’s stock will enter a downturn over the next 6 months due to overvaluation.
Piracy scandal grows around Alibaba
This week could well go down as a turning point for high-flying e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), whose growing war of words with a top government agency is quickly becoming a major scandal. The increasingly heated exchange has almost completely overshadowed the latest media reports that say Alibaba’s financial arm is preparing to launch a bank later this year. A separate company announcement indicates the bank will use an innovative credit rating system that draws on Alibaba’s huge volume of big data generated from the billions of transactions and other information exchanges that cross over its network. Read Full Post…
