Alibaba could raise record breaking $21 billion in IPO

Alibaba IPO is expected to price at between $60 and $66 a share, making it bigger than Facebook

We all know that the Alibaba IPO is going to be huge, and possibly record breaking. Now we have a better idea of just how much money the company could raise when it goes public.

The Chinese e-commerce giant is selling 320.1 million American depositary shares, at between $60 and $66 per share, it was revealed in a filing with the Security and Exchange Commission on Friday.

That means that, on the high end, the company could raise up to $21.1 billion in its initial public offering. That would make it the largest IPO in history; even at the low end it would still raise $19.2 billion, easily surpassing Facebook's $16 billion IPO back in 2012.

And you can imagine that raising that amount of money is going to make some people, and companies, very rich.

Yahoo owns more than 22% of the company, despite selling back half of its 40% stake in the company in September of 2012, for a total of $7.6 billion, while Japan’s SoftBank owns a 34% stake. Yahoo has plans to sell 121.7 million shares, which would net the company $8 billion. Yahoo's remaining 400 million shares would give it a 16.3% stake, worth $26.5 billion. Softbank does not plan to sell any of its shares, and its stake would be worth over $52 billion.

Meanwhile, Jack Ma, the company's founder, chairman and former CEO (he resigned from that position in early 2013) could make over $840 million, if he sells 12.75 million shares, according to Forbes. His stake in Alibaba, which amounts to 193 million share, could be worth over $12 billion.

Joseph Tsai, Alibaba’s vice chairman, could make up to $280 million by selling 4.25 million shares. His remaining 3.2% stake following the IPO will be worth more than $5.2 billion.

Alibaba is the premiere e-commerce site in China. Founded in 1999, Alibaba hosts a group of e-commerce businesses. They include a shopping search engine, B2B online web portals, data-centric cloud computing services, and online retail and payment services.

The company is so big that in 2012 just two of its portals made 1.1 trillion Yuan, or $170 billion in sales, more than eBay and Amazon combined. 

In the most recent quarter, the company saw total revenue of $2.54 billion, with a net income of $1.99 billion. In 2013, Alibaba's total revenue was $34.5 billion, up from $20 billion in 2012. It's next income doubled, going from $4.2 billion to $8.4 billion. 

(Image source: sulihalo.hu)