JD floats on stock market higher than expected in China’s biggest ever ecommerce IPO

JD (NASDAQ:JD), China’s second largest Amazon-style ecommerce store, hit stock markets moments ago. After initially pricing its shares at $19 a pop earlier today, the stock actually debuted at $21.75. It’s the third biggest IPO in the world so far this year. (Update: At the end of the first day, JD closed down slightly at $20.90 per share).

By selling 93.7 million shares at the initial $19, JD has raised $1.78 billion. The company is now valued at about $26 billion, in contrast to Amazon’s current $140 billion.

The estore – formerly called 360Buy – has 47.4 million active user accounts. It sold RMB 125.5 billion ($20.7 billion) worth of items in 2013. JD mainly focuses on mainland China, though it has an English site that ships a limited line-up of products from China to 78 countries.

Wild day at #NASDAQ today! Huge http://t.co/lbMaBGVIEf IPO with a Golden Bull in #TimesSquare $JD pic.twitter.com/zMkwfCpbCv

— Josh Machiz (@Machiz) May 22, 2014

JD is second to Alibaba’s Tmall in terms of market share in China’s business-to-consumer ecommerce sector (as opposed to person-to-person selling). Tmall has 50.6 percent share, JD has 23.3 percent, and an array of also-rans (including Amazon China) have less than three percent share each.

See: As world awaits Alibaba IPO, China’s ecommerce spending grows to $74 billion in Q1

In some ways, JD’s IPO will be a barometer for the market’s reception to Alibaba’s IPO, which is in the pipeline but could still take months to list. However, Alibaba covers a lot more ground than JD, so it’s tough to make a direct comparison between the two, save for the direct rivalry between Tmall and JD in China’s B2C ecommerce sector.

If JD-dot-com is taking over Times Sq for IPO celebration, can only imagine what Alibaba will do pic.twitter.com/sH686iBEM9

— Barry Graubart (@graubart) May 22, 2014