Alibaba Group Holding Limited (“Alibaba” or the “Company”) (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988) has officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) today, successfully going public in Hong Kong.
Shares of Alibaba jumped more than 7% within the first hour of its Hong Kong debut as investors wasted no time buying into one of China’s most successful internet companies.
Alibaba Group’s Hong Kong-listed shares will be fully fungible with the Company’s American depositary shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
On this important milestone, I want to thank our customers first and foremost. My gratitude goes to all the Alibaba consumers who have supported us over the past 20 years, standing by us through our trial and error, as well as innovation for the future. Today, we are honored to have 10 customers and partners from across our Alibaba digital economy representing four continents and eight countries strike the gong at our listing ceremony, marking the start of our trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
said Alibaba Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang.
In 2014, when Alibaba was listed on the NYSE, a group of its digital economy and ecosystem partners was invited to ring the bell in the U.S., celebrating and sharing the important moment. Check out these videos if you are not familiar with Alibaba’s digital platforms.
The 10 customers and partners onstage to kick off this morning’s trading are involved with Taobao, Alipay, Alibaba Cloud, Fliggy, Lazada, Tmall, and AliExpress, with backgrounds ranging from users, merchants, internet celebrities and IoT experts to entrepreneurs. This demonstrates the globalization and diversification of the Alibaba Digital Economy, echoing the arrangements at the Alibaba’s NYSE listing.
I want to especially thank Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. As a result of the continuous innovation and changes to the Hong Kong capital market, we are able to realize what we regrettably missed out on five years ago. Today, we realized what we said then: ‘When conditions allow, we will come back to Hong Kong
said Zhang.
Alibaba Group aims to serve over one billion annual active consumers and achieve over RMB10 trillion in annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) through its China consumer business in the next five years. This establishes a solid foundation to achieve the Group’s long-term strategic goal: to serve two billion consumers in the world, empower 10 million profitable enterprises and create 100 million jobs.
We are also grateful for being a part of this era, which is driven by digital innovation. Through the development of the internet and digital economy, we have been granted the opportunity to fulfill our founding mission, ‘to make it easy to do business anywhere.’ We want to use digital technology to help our customers and partners embrace the era of the digital economy,
said Zhang.
With e-commerce being its core business, Alibaba runs the largest digital advertising business in China and delivered the second-largest global shipment in smart speakers in Q3 2019.
