Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. gave early investors a generous return on their investment on the firm’s first day of trading today.
Shares, priced at $68 late Thursday, picked up $25.89, or 38.1 percent, to close at $93.89 in Nasdaq trading, translating into a market capitalization of $231.44 billion for the Chinese e-commerce giant. By contrast, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, was up 0.8 percent to $76.84, giving it only a slightly higher market cap of $247.62 billion.
Alibaba’s stock retreated only slightly — 0.7 percent to $93.22 — in the first minutes of after-hours trading.
Volume for Alibaba’s shares was 270.9 million shares for the eagerly anticipated offering, which stole the spotlight on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.1 percent to 17,280.06 and the S&P 500 fell 0.1 percent to 2,010.42.