Canada Pension Chief Talks Profitable Alibaba Investment

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The chief executive of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) talked with the Financial Post this week about the Board’s investment in Alibaba in 2011.

At the time, Alibaba was an unknown tech company in China. A few years later, the company’s initial public offering was the largest in history.

But CPPIB CEO Mark Wiseman says the investment was no “quick win”.

He told the Financial Post:

The US$314.5-million investment, while very profitable, happened because of a decision more than five years earlier to put “feet on the ground in Asia” by opening an office in Hong Kong in 2008, he said Monday.

“Our team in Hong Kong was able to educate our investment committee and others back here in Toronto, so that when the [initial] investment opportunity finally came to fruition in 2011, we were in a position to understand the business,” Mr. Wiseman said in an interview.

“They understood the Chinese market and the Chinese consumer. They had real experience in the region and understood both the similarities and, importantly, the differences between the way that retailing and trade are done in China [and how it’s done in North America].”

CPPIB subsequently increased its stake in Alibaba in 2012 and again through the IPO, and the combined stake is now worth “substantially more” than the cost base.

The CPPIB has a total of $314.5 million invested in Alibaba.

 

Photo by  Charles Chan via Flickr CC License

Canada Pension Chief Talks About “One of the Best Investments We’ve Ever Made”: Investing in Alibaba in 2011

Alibaba

The chief executive of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) talked with the Financial Post on Thursday about the Board’s investment in Alibaba in 2011.

At the time, Alibaba was an unknown tech company in China. A few years later, the company’s initial public offering was the largest in history.

From the Financial Post:

[Wiseman] said the reason the Canadian pension fund manager was able to make a “very sizeable investment” in what was then “an obscure Internet company” in a city in China few had heard of is because executives had opened an office in Hong Kong back in 2008.

“That investment story which everybody is touting as one of the best investments we’ve ever made, it didn’t happen overnight. That investment started in many respects almost seven year ago,” Mr. Wiseman said.

“It started with a view towards that market, a view that we need to build capabilities in the region, that we need to deepen our understanding of the region, and that we had a long-term view around the Chinese consumer, the importance of the Chinese consumer.”

Mr. Wiseman said the route to the Alibaba investment, which is worth “substantially more” than the fund’s cost base thanks in part to a large investment in the successful IPO last month, illustrates the long-term strategy and the “on the ground” investing style.

“We didn’t get brilliant in four weeks, right? … We had people on the ground in Hangzhou [the city in China where Alibaba is based] before people knew where Hangzhou was,” he said.

“We were there soon after opening our office in Hong Kong, developing those relationships with people who speak the language and who understand the market… To me, this is exactly what we’re trying to do as an organization.”

After the initial investment in 2011, CPPIB increased its stake the following year and then again through the IPO, Mr. Wiseman said.

The CPPIB has a total of $314.5 invested in Alibaba.

 

Photo by Charles Chan via Flickr CC License

Canada Pension Fund Gets In On Alibaba IPO, To The Tune of $160 Million

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There’s been a huge demand from large investors to get in on the initial public offering of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the Chinese e-commerce giant that conducts nearly 80 percent of China’s online commerce.

But the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) – the entity that invests assets for the Canada Pension Plan – isn’t one of them. That’s because the CPPIB revealed today that it invested in Alibaba years ago.

Reported by Bloomberg:

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board said it has invested $160 million in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), the Chinese e-commerce company that plans to go public tomorrow.

The country’s largest pension fund manager made two direct investments in Alibaba in 2011 and 2012 for a total of $136 million, Linda Sims, a Canada Pension spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

The pension plan has another $24 million indirect investment through a private-equity fund managed by Silver Lake Management LLC, she said.

What’s the investment worth now? The CPPIB declined to disclose the figures, saying that they won’t release that information until they sell their stake.

But according to some back-of-the-envelope calculations, the initial investment could have ballooned by up to 500 percent. From Bloomberg:

At the time of the initial investment in 2011, the Hangzhou-based Alibaba was valued at about $32 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said at the time. In May 2012, when Yahoo! Inc. sold part of its stake in Alibaba the transaction valued the company at about $35 billion.

Alibaba is expected to price its IPO at between $66 and $68 a share when it debuts on the New York Stock Exchange Friday, valuing the company at about $168 billion.

The estimated five-fold increase in Alibaba’s share price would make Canada Pension’s direct investment worth about $680 million based on the time the investments were made.

The fund manager’s indirect investment in the company is harder to calculate because the fund, Silver Lake Partners III LP, is invested in more than just Alibaba.

Alibaba’s IPO may be the world’s largest ever. The company conducts more transactions than Amazon and EBay – combined.