Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) would be one of the biggest companies in the S&P 500 according to market capitalization—if it was part of the index. In fact, research from FactSet indicates that Alibaba would already be within the top 15, even though its initial public offering was just last week.
How Alibaba stacks up against S&P 500 companies
Shares of Alibaba Group opened at $92.70 on Friday, and based on that and the 2.465 billion outstanding shares, the Chinese online retailer had a market capitalization of $228.5 billion. Looking at Monday’s closing prices for S&P 500 companies, FactSet reports that Alibaba would have ranked 12th according to market cap—if it was part of the index.
As you can see from the graph, Alibaba’s market cap was even ahead of companies in more “traditional” sectors, including Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), International Business Machines Corp (NYSE:IBM) and The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO). Graph is courtesy FactSet.
Where Alibaba would rank in sub-sectors
When segmenting the S&P 500 Index into sub-sectors, FactSet noted that Alibaba Group would be second out of the top seven companies in the Internet Software and Services sub-sector. In fact, the Chinese ecommerce giant would have fallen behind only Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) and beat Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and other major technology companies.
When zeroing in on the Internet Retail sub-sector within the S&P 500, Alibaba Group would have been the largest according to market cap, beating the likes of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), and other Wall Street favorites.
Alibaba’s market cap shrinks
Of course Alibaba shares have come down in price since opening day on the New York Stock Exchange. As of this writing, the Chinese online retailer’s market cap was at around $216.2 billion. That still puts it close to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) and The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG), although it pushes Alibaba down below Procter & Gamble instead of just above.
