Alibaba, the largest e-commerce company in China that delivered 70 percent of all packages sent from China recently, has been growing rapidly; annual reports show a 66 percent increase was seen in its fourth quarter quarter revenue for 2013 compared to 2012. A Yahoo presentation showed that the net income doubled to $1.35B in this period. Yahoo owns 24 percent of Alibaba's stocks. The increase has prompted analysts to increase their valuation of a probable U.S. initial public offering. According to an average estimate collected by Bloomberg from 10 analysts, Alibaba was valued at $153B in February 2014.

After struggling to convince regulators in Hong Kong to endorse a recommended governance structure allowing its partners to elect most of its board of directors last March 16, Alibaba announced that it has started to file for a U.S. IPO. The process is expected to be completed by the end of the month. When completed, Alibaba's IPO is speculated to raise enough to rival even the $16B raised in 2012 by Facebook Inc., although a Bloomberg opinion piece by William Pesek urged investors not to be unrealistically optimistic.

Sameet Sinha, an analyst with B. Riley & Co. in San Francisco, stated during a phone interview with Bloomberg that the results have by far surpassed their expectations. In an emailed report, Sinha set his valuation on Alibaba as $130B, but also thought it could be as high as $180B.

The high appraisals have also been good news for Alibaba's major owners. SoftBank Corp. (9984), which owns approximately 37 percent of Alibaba, had its shares go up to 8.5 percent in the Tokyo stock market, which is their highest gain since June 10. At the same time, shares of Yahoo increased on the U.S. stock market following a 2.3 percent increase and closed at $34.21 in New York on April 21.