Alibaba shares drop in premarket before lock-up period expiration

By David Gaffen and Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Inc shares were lower before the opening bell on Wednesday, as a six-month period prohibiting insiders from selling their shares was set to expire, in an event that many thought could expose the Chinese e-commerce giant's stock to more weakness.

In premarket trading, shares were down 1.3 percent at $83.40. Coming into the day's action, the stock was down more than 29 percent from its November high.

Alibaba opened on Sept. 19 at $92.70, ended its first day at $93.89 and reached its peak Nov. 13 at $120. The stock closed Tuesday at $84.50, about 24 percent above the $68 initial public offering price.

On Wednesday, a lock-up period expires that will allow insiders owning a total of 437 million Alibaba shares to sell.

That chunk, representing about 18 percent of outstanding shares, exceeds the 368 million it sold in the IPO, though about 100 million of those shares held by employees are restricted for sale until the company reports results in May.

A larger lock-up of more than a billion shares held by insiders, including Yahoo! Inc, expires in September. That has raised investor concerns about further drops in the stock as insiders sell.

As of Feb 27, short interest in the stock came to almost 57 million shares, or 2.3 percent of Alibaba's outstanding stock (2.488 billion). That's more than double the 21 million shares as of Sept 30, when the Nasdaq began compiling data.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)