Alibaba Posts First-Quarter Profit Of Nearly $2 Billion

The giant Chinese Internet retailer Alibaba reported $1.99 billion in profit for the three months ending June 30, nearly tripling over that time, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday.

Revenue rose 45 percent in Chinese currency to equal about $2.15 billion.

Alibaba Group will list about 12 percent of its shares with the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “BABA” soon after Labor Day and is expected to raise up to $20 billion in its initial public offering, surpassing Facebook Inc.’s (NYSE:FB) phenomenal $16 billion IPO in 2012.

The company, founded in 1999 by 49-year-old former English teacher Jack Ma, has annual revenues exceeding those of Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) combined. Alibaba has been criticized for its unusual management structure, which allows some shareholders like Ma to have more power than others. Ma's stake in the company is about 9 percent.

Alibaba’s main businesses are websites Tmall.com and Taobao.com, websites like Amazon where third-party merchants sell goods and in Tmall's case, pay Alibaba a commission. The company also has investments in Singapore’s postal carrier SingPost, a Chinese soccer team and China’s most popular mobile web browser called UCWeb.