Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has yet to commence its initial public offering, but the company is already affecting some exchange traded funds that feature large allocations to Chinese Internet stocks.
Alibaba is expected to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “BABA” after Labor Day. In the run-up to what is the most anticipated Internet IPO since Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB) in 2012, Alibaba’s valuation is surging amid stellar profit growth. In June, the company said its net income for year ending March nearly tripled, reports Belinda Cao for Bloomberg.
That data point is likely to stick with investors that measure Alibaba against Amazon (NasdaqGS: AMZN), a company that has had difficulty being consistently profitable. Rather than acting as a burden to its rivals, Alibaba’s profitability is sparking shares of the companies that line ETFs such as the KraneShares CSI China Internet Fund (NasdaqGM: KWEB) and the Powershares Golden Dragon Halter USX China Portfolio (NYSEArca: PGJ).
Fueled by gains in companies such as Vipshop (NYSE: VIPS) and YY (NasdaqGS: YY), Bloomberg notes its Bloomberg China-US Equity Index, of which about half the members are web companies, is up 7.9% this year compared to a 0.3% gain for the Dow Jones Internet Composite Index.
Looking at how Alibaba is affecting ETFs, KWEB has surged 17.5% this year while PGJ is up 6.3%. The First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund (NYSEArca: FDN) is up just 1.3%. PGJ, which is not a dedicated Internet ETF, does feature eight Chinese Internet names among its top-10 holdings, including a combined 8.2% weight to Vipshop and YY. [ETFs for a VIP of Internet Stocks]
KWEB allocates 9.8% of its weight to those names and also features one of the largest weights to newly public JD.com (NasdaqGS: JD) of any ETF. Shares of JD, an online retailer, have surged 35.1% since the company’s May IPO. KWEB is up almost 4% in just the past week and nearly 11% in the past month. The ETF is likely to be one of the first to add Alibaba, which could happen after the stock’s eleventh trading day. [Behind the China Internet ETF’s Surge]
KWEB constituents “boosted sales by 41 percent and earnings by 30 percent on average in the first quarter, compared with sales growth of 19 percent and 24 percent profit increase for U.S. web-focused companies,” Bloomberg reported citing KraneShares.
Despite its ascent, PGJ trades with a P/E of just under 26 and price-to-book ratio of 2.76 compared to 34.4 and 4.39 on FDN.
KraneShares CSI China Internet Fund
ETF Trends editorial team contributed to this post. Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of Facebook.