Alibaba's revenues surge ahead of IPO

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group reported robust growth in second quarter revenues, a positive sign for its expected IPO in the United States.

Alibaba's trading volume in the second quarter on its three major platforms, Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan, reached 501 billion yuan (81.3 billion U.S. dollars), up 45 percent year on year, according to a regulatory update filed on Wednesday night.

Alibaba's second quarter revenues were 15.7 billion yuan, up 46 percent from the previous year.

Alibaba, whose IPO could be the largest ever by a technology company, said trading volumes on its mobile platforms in the second quarter reached 164 billion yuan, almost triple those of the same period last year.

Alibaba is expected to start its roadshow in early September in Hong Kong and Singapore, a company source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Alibaba had 279 million active buyers by the end of June, according to the filing.

Alibaba first filed its IPO document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 6. Afterwards, the company submitted three amended prospectuses to the SEC on June 16, June 26 and July 11, respectively.

Alibaba, which the Wall Street Journal called "a mix of Amazon, eBay and PayPal with a dash of Google," had a gross merchandise volume of 248 billion U.S. dollars in 2013 on its three major trading platforms, more than those of eBay and Amazon.com combined.

Analysts expect the company to raise 15 to 20 billion U.S.dollars through the IPO, likely challenging social networking company Facebook's 16-billion-dollar offering in 2012 and credit card company Visa's 19.7-billion-dollar IPO in 2008.