Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) is just a few hours into its second day as a public company, but investors looking to access the stock via exchange traded funds already have one option.
As was reported last week, the First Trust US IPO Index Fund (NYSEArca: FPX) made room for Alibaba at the close of U.S. markets Friday, the stock’s first day of trading. Alibaba has entered FPX with a weight of 2.89%, making the stock the ETF’s eighth-largest holding, according to First Trust data.
IPOX Schuster, the company behind the IPOX-100 U.S. Index, the benchmark for FPX, initially indicated Alibaba would not be included in the index, but last Wednesday IPOX Schuster confirmed that after external and internal reviews, it decided to add Alibaba to FPX’s underlying index. With that decision, FPX became the first ETF to add shares of Alibaba and in a rarity among IPO ETFs, did so after the stock’s first day trading day. [ETF Changes Its Mind About Alibaba]
Although its current market value of $222.4 billion means it is about $23 billion larger than Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB), Alibaba’s weight in FPX is less than a third of the 10.1% the ETF allocates to Mark Zuckerberg’s company. Well-known FPX constituents that Alibaba outweighs within the ETF include Marathon Petroleum (NYSE: MPC), Hilton Worldwide (NYSE: HLT) and Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors (NasdaqGS: TSLA).
Alibaba’s inclusion in FPX appears to have stoked some modest buying of the ETF last week. Last Tuesday, the ETF finished the day with $513.7 million in assets under management, but the fund entered Monday with nearly $532 million in assets.
While FPX is the first ETF to add Alibaba to its roster, the rival Renaissance IPO ETF (NYSEArca: IPO) is likely to feature a much larger weight to Alibaba when that ETF adds the stock after Friday’s close. In an interview with ETF Trends from the Morningstar Conference in Chicago, Renaissance Capital Principal Kathleen Smith said based on Alibaba’s expected market value, and the size of Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), it is likely Jack Ma’s company makes a big entrance into IPO, immediately becoming the ETF’s largest position. [Alibaba IPO Shines a Light on This ETF]