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China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group started trading at 92.70 U.S. dollars per share at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Friday.
The opening price, which is about 36 percent higher than Alibaba's initial public offering (IPO) price of 68 U.S. dollars set late Thursday, did not come out until about 10 minutes before noon.
The company offered 320 million shares and raised 21.8 billion dollars, becoming the largest IPO in U.S. history.
Alibaba shares popped to a session high of 99.70 dollars apiece shortly after opening for trading but fluctuated and gradually eased to around 90 dollars early in the afternoon, taking the company's market capital to more than 220 billion dollars, compared to 150 billion dollars market capital of its American rival Amazon.
Commenting on the opening price, Partner/Designated Market Maker at J. Streicher & Co. Mark Otto told Xinhua: "It's not a surprise to me. It opens at 92.70 dollars on 48 million shares, which dwarfed the Twitter opening."
"It probably may hit resistance at 100 dollars," Otto said.
Ma said in an interview with CNBC that he was "excited and honored about the IPO."
"We have a dream. We hope in the next 15 years that the world changes because of us," said Ma, promising they would work to take care of investors and make shareholders happy.
"It's a great day for everybody," said Kenneth Polcari, director of NYSE Floor Operations at O'Neil Securities Inc." Certainly a great day for them, certainly a great day for the Chinese in general that they can come here to the United States, to an iconic place like the New York Stock Exchange and participate in this capitalization market, capitalization process. "
Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma in 1999, has grown into one of the largest e-commerce titans in the world and now controls 80 percent of all online retail sales in China. It started its global roadshow on Sept. 8 in New York and received enough bookings for the offering within five days thanks to massive interests from worldwide investors.
