Research archive for BABA

Alibaba announced yesterday that it intends to split into six independent units, which propelled its share price higher by 14%. The gains were most welcome, because the shares have been sliding lower ever since 2020 when founder Jack Ma gave a speech very critical of the Chinese government. That set off a brutal round of fines and regulatory actions against the tech sector by Beijing officials. Ma resigned and went into hiding.

Alibaba posted its slowest growth in quarterly revenues since it went public in 2014. The e-commerce giant reported revenues of $38.07 billion, up 10% year-on-year and profits of $3.21 billion, down 74%. This has been a year where it has grappled with a host of challenges from, supply chain constraints, competition, to regulatory crackdowns which led to a record anti-monopoly fine in China.

All the hysteria about new Chinese government regulations overshadowed the fact that Alibaba released results a few days ago. Although revenues missed estimates slightly, they still grew by 33.8% off of a very high base.

Last week Alibaba reported their latest numbers. Like most tech companies, it beat expectations for both the top and bottom line. Revenue for the quarter was up 34% and net income increased 124%. The profit number is rather volatile though due to all of their investments in other companies.

The South East Asian financial services and payments behemoth controlled by Jack Ma is finally doing the necessary admin needed to list on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchange. Ant Financial Group, the operator of Alipay, a wallet that is used by 1.3 billion users in Alibaba's e-commerce networks could be worth as much as $200 billion.

Alibaba passed $1 trillion in gross merchandise volume for the first time ever during the 2020 financial year end. The e-commerce giant released their fourth quarter earnings on Friday showing that their retail business did well under the pandemic as people were buying more groceries and fresh foods online under lockdown.

I think of myself as a globalist and I'm against the concept of the nation state. Except for every four years when the World Cup is on (football, cricket or rugby), then I want South Africa to win. For the rest of the time I hate nationalism, border controls, ethnic rivalry, trade barriers, local currencies, local political elites, and visas. So I don't like people like Donald Trump. Let's make the whole world great again. Come on, we are one species!

Alibaba has over 600 million customers around the world. Last week this Chinese tech behemoth reported quarterly results. Revenues grew by 54% to $12.4bn, $10.5bn of that was from retail. The rest came from cloud computing, digital media and entertainment.

There's no denying that e-commerce is changing the way we consume our favourite items, be it clothing, prepared meals, fast food, electronics, groceries etc. Early investors in this e-commerce wave have enjoyed a lot of value creation, and the funny thing is that we are not even at a point where e-commerce is approaching maturity.

On Thursday we had another expectation smashing, set of numbers from a Chinese internet company, this time it was from Alibaba. They had revenues of RMB 50.1 billion ($7.4 billion) for the first quarter, an increase of 56%. Analysts had estimated it to come in at RMB 47.7 billion. Earnings per share were up even more, growing by 62%, showing that even with their monster top line growth they are not sacrificing margins. Here is a look at how the different divisions stack up.

Last week we had 3Q numbers from Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-tail giant. The company is still growing like gang busters, with revenue up 54% YoY!. The huge growth is not coming off a small base either, with revenues for a quarter currently sitting around $7.7 billion.

Alibaba's 2Q numbers for the quarter ending on the 30 September. The Chinese internet company showed strong top line and bottom line growth.

Ali Baba might have fought off the 40 thieves, the founder and CEO of the Alibaba group certainly had bigger hurdles to overcome. The story goes that Jack Ma invited 24 friends to his house and presented his ideas for the business to them, they listened for two hours. Only 1 out of the 24 folks there thought that the idea of the marketplace that Ma put to them would be a commercial success. Ma is known for his pithy quotes, saying stuff like "if you are not rich by 35, then you only have yourself to blame". In fact he was harsher than that, he suggested that you were poor because you have no ambition. Which is a little harsh. Like most entrepreneurial types, he is more than a little crazy and a whole lot quirky. He is in many ways not too different to Musk, to Bezos, those types of people who relentlessly put their ideas into action.

Ali Baba, at least the original one from the book, Ali Baba and the forty thieves, was a poor woodcutter, the brother of a fellow by the name of Cassim, who had married into wealth. It must have been tough for Ali. Ali Baba stumbled across forty thieves and their magic command to enter a cave full of wonders, the term "open, sesame" comes from the story. Cassim gets to the cave, remembers sesame on the way in and not the way out and gets killed by the thieves. The story ends well for Ali, he manages to somehow thwart the thieves and the captain and uses the gold for himself and his family for the rest of his days.