Yet rumors have been that the company is talking to its advisors since the end of the Chinese New Year on a possible IPO for the second half of this year.
The recent results of Alibaba’s growth in Q3 – which were reported in Yahoo‘s (YHOO) 10K filing made the sell-side more bullish on Alibaba’s value.
Barclay’s Anthony DiClemente said on Monday that Alibaba may be worth $55 billion in an IPO. Cantor Fitzgerald’s Youssef Squali said yesterday Alibaba may be worth up to $79 billion in an IPO.
For the record, I have long insisted that Alibaba would be valued at $64 billion in an IPO at the start of 2013 and $79 billion if the IPO was held closer to the end of this year.
The sell-side now seems to have religion on the sum of the part value of Yahoo. Both Cantor and Barclays raised their price targets to $26 this week. Last November — when Yahoo was trading at $17 — I laid out the sum-of-the parts reasoning for how Yahoo could go to $40 by the end of 2013. I guess it just took another 35% move in the stock to get the sell-side on board.
At the end of last week, Venturebeat published an infographic produced by Alibaba on how fast the Chinese e-commerce market is growing and how that’s benefiting Alibaba.
Here are some of the facts they included: