Friday, February 14, 2014

Alibaba to buy remaining shares of AutoNavi

News this week: The leading Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba Group, has announced plans to complete the buy-out of Beijing-based digital mapping firm, AutoNavi. Alibaba paid US$294 million for a 28% stake in the company in May 2013. Alibaba is expected to pay between US$1.13 billion and US$1.17 billion for the remaining shares of NASDAQ-listed AutoNavi.

Alibaba will reportedly offer US$21 per ADR, which is a 27% premium over the closing price of AutoNavi on NASDAQ on 7th February, at US$16.54. The deal values the company at US$1.58 billion. According to media reports, revenues for the company for the first three quarters in 2013 were US$110 million.

As of the third quarter of 2013, AutoNavi had about 77 million active users of its free mobile map apps and had more than 31% market share of the mobile app market in China, followed by Baidu’s 27% and Google’s 7.6%.

This post is excerpted from BSG's weekly e-newsletter which is part of our subscription research service, BSG Tracker. Visit our website to find out more about this service. You can also follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates.

No comments: