Alibaba stock debuts 36% above $68 IPO price

The e-commerce company held off its IPO for a few hours due to the large volume of orders

Its pretty safe to say that Alibaba is not only the most anticipated stock debut of the year, but likely since Twitter went public in November of last year.

In fact, the IPO is so large that trading was delayed for hours this morning due to the large volume of orders for the stock! (The company certainly did want to see a repeat of the Facebook fiasco when that company had its debut in 2012)

Now it has finally begun trading and, so far, share are not disappointing: they opened at $92.70, or 36% above the $68 IPO price in early trading on Friday.

The stock is now up 40%, or $27.20, to $95.20 a share.

The company priced its initial public offering at the top of its expected range, meaning that it has raised $29.7 billion at its initial price, easily surpassingFacebook's $16 billion IPO, and Visa's $17.9 billion offering from 2008.

The price values Alibaba at $227.25 billion.

Some of the parties that stand to make a lot of money off of this IPO include Yahoo, which 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. Japan’s SoftBank will also make a pretty penny, as it 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. 

Alibaba is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “BABA.”