Bottom line: China’s largest corporations need to face stiffer regulatory penalties to ensure their compliance with Beijing rules, as part of a campaign to clean up the country’s business climate.
More strictness needed in Alibaba, telco cases
Some of China’s leading high-tech firms were in the headlines last week for foot-dragging in response to government calls to change their business practices, in separate cases that show why Beijing needs to get more aggressive about enforcing its rules among big domestic corporations.
The first case saw e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) sued by one of the world’s top makers of luxury goods for allegedly refusing to clean up its popular sites of trafficking in pirated goods. The second saw critics accuse China’s 3 major mobile carriers of taking largely empty steps to improve their mobile data pricing and speeds, after Beijing called on them to take such action. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Alibaba’s change of CEO shows that founder Jack Ma is still calling the shots at the company, and a rally for its shares will be short-lived before they continue a gradual downward movement back toward their IPO level.
Alibaba shifts course with new CEO
Investors nervously awaiting the release of e-commerce giant Alibaba’s (NYSE: BABA) latest quarterly results were instead greeted with the surprising news that the company has just named its third CEO in 2 years. Alibaba founder Jack Ma is spinning the story as part of a plan to hand over the running of his company to a generation of Internet-savvy youngsters born after 1970. That may be true, though I do find it somewhat ironic that the replacement of former CEO Jonathan Lu with the younger Daniel Zhang shows quite clearly who is still firmly in control at Alibaba, namely Ma himself, who is hardly a post-1970s youngster. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Government officials are being forced to deal carefully with newly minted Internet giants like Alibaba, which sometimes commit transgressions due to their youth but also provide huge contributions to China’s economy.
Alibaba a double-edge sword for govt
A trio of stories about Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) nicely summarize both the risks and benefits that China’s Internet juggernauts present for the government, which must walk a fine line between taming these newly minted giants while being careful not to kill such economic powerhouses. In just the space of a decade, Alibaba, alongside Tencent (HKEx: 700) and Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), have grown rapidly from venture-funded start-ups to become some of the world’s most valuable companies.
That growth and status has brought not only big prestige to China, but also valuable tax dollars to local governments and high-tech jobs that Beijing wants to replace lower-tech manufacturing labor. But at the same time, such young companies are particularly vulnerable to missteps, which can create chaos in the marketplace and Beijing needs to be careful to control. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Alibaba’s clean-up of its Taobao marketplace is likely to last for the next year, and could see growth in trading volume on the platform fall by about half of current levels to the 15-20 percent range.
Alibaba evicts 26 sellers from Taobao
Two months after a scandal erupted over high piracy rates on one of its main websites, e-commerce leader Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) has moved to address the problem with the expulsion of 26 merchants from its popular Taobao C2C platform. Alibaba’s description of the campaign shows the company is still avoiding the word “piracy” in its discussion of the clean-up, reflecting the sensitivity of the situation. But the larger question is just how many merchants will ultimately be expelled from Taobao, and what that will mean for Alibaba’s top and bottom lines. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China should work with its major trading partners to send unified signals on issues like piracy to create a transparent business climate and avoid confusion.
US, China send crossed signals on piracy
In an unusual reversal of roles, Washington officials who regularly criticize China for piracy found themselves defending Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) on the issue last week, just a month after a Beijing regulator blasted the e-commerce leader for allowing rampant fake goods trade on its popular Taobao site. The conflicting messages are at least partly political, since a similar US condemnation would have contradicted Washington’s praise of Alibaba’s piracy-fighting efforts over the last 2 years. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Alibaba’s sharp slowdown in quarterly revenue growth is unlikely to be a fluke, and will put downward pressure on the company’s stock as its post-IPO honeymoon comes to an abrupt end.
Alibaba revenue growth slows sharply
When the history books are written, this week will almost surely go down as the one that e-commerce leader Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) would like to completely erase from the record. The company has spent most of the week struggling with a nightmare in the publicity and government relations department due to a piracy scandal, and now it’s just released new quarterly results that showed sharply slowing growth at the end of last year. The perfect storm of bad news wiped nearly 9 percent off Alibaba’s stock in the latest trading session, and for the week it’s down about 13 percent. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: The piracy scandal rocking Alibaba will blow over in a few weeks with minimal longer-term impact, though the company’s stock will enter a downturn over the next 6 months due to overvaluation.
Piracy scandal grows around Alibaba
This week could well go down as a turning point for high-flying e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), whose growing war of words with a top government agency is quickly becoming a major scandal. The increasingly heated exchange has almost completely overshadowed the latest media reports that say Alibaba’s financial arm is preparing to launch a bank later this year. A separate company announcement indicates the bank will use an innovative credit rating system that draws on Alibaba’s huge volume of big data generated from the billions of transactions and other information exchanges that cross over its network. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Alibaba’s stock is likely to come under continued pressure over the next 6 months, as it grapples with overvaluation, piracy issues and a large volume of shares coming back into the market from Yahoo.
Yahoo to spin off Alibaba stake
E-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) is in a couple of major headlines today, raising questions about its future ownership and also its open platform business model. On the ownership side, US Internet giant Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) has announced it will spin off its large stake in Alibaba into a separate company, and then distribute shares in that new firm to existing Yahoo shareholders. On the business model side, Alibaba has enlisted one of the thousands of merchants on its popular Taobao C2C marketplace to respond to a government audit that found nearly two-thirds of goods sold on Taobao were fakes. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on January 28. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Yahoo to Spin Off Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) Stake Tax-Free As Public Company (English article)
Taobao Publishes Merchant Letter Questioning Accuracy Of Govt Piracy Audit (Chinese article)
JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) Launches Major Imported Foods Initiative (GlobeNewswire)
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Ranked As Top China Smartphone Seller In Q4 – Report (Chinese article)
Huawei Eyes $16 Bln In 2015 Smartphone Sales With High-End, Export Push (Chinese article)
Bottom line: A new list of China’s top apps spotlights fast-growing names like news app Today’s Headlines, photo app Meitu and dictionary app Youdao, which could raise hundreds of millions of dollars in new funds this year.
Meitu earns place on top 10 app list
A newly released list of China’s top 10 apps for 2014 is shining a spotlight on an up-and-coming field of lesser known names that could be companies to watch, as many are much younger than stalwarts like Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and Tencent (HKEx: 700). The “BAT” trio of China’s biggest Internet firms took 4 of the top 10 spots on the list, which was compiled by Baidu. But far more interesting were some of the other names, including recently listed social networking app Momo (Nasdaq: MOMO) and news app Today’s Headlines, which made its own headlines with its meteoric rise last year. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on August 26. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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German Car Parts Suppliers Asked To Form JVs In China: Stuttgarter (English article)
Taobao, Vanke (HKEx: 2202) In Property Selling Initiative (Chinese article)
China Mobile (HKEx: 941) Announces Interim Results (HKEx announcement)
Hunan Satellite TV Spends 1 Bln Yuan To Support Mango TV (Chinese article)
MIIT Issues Third Batch Of VNO Licenses To 6 Recipients (Chinese article)
