Bottom line: Alibaba’s purchase of 33 percent of Ant Financial looks like a shrewd move for both firms, making Ant more attractive in the run-up to an IPO likely to be one of the world’s biggest this year.
Alibaba and Ant back together
In what looks like a homecoming of sorts, e-commerce giant Alibaba(NYSE: BABA) has just announced it is taking back a major stake in its Ant Financial affiliate. Followers of this pair will know they have quite a long and complex relationship, and were actually once part of the same company. But they were split apart around a decade ago for political reasons, which apparently aren’t an issue anymore.
The other major plank to this story is Ant’s own story, including the unusual way in which this deal was structured. The company, whose core asset is the popular Alipay electronic payments service, is gearing up for what could be one of the biggest fintech IPOs of this year, likely to raise several billion dollars in Hong Kong. Thus this particular move could be designed to draw more attention to this lesser-known Alibaba offspring, and also to relieve it of some of its financial burden in the run-up to that offering. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Alibaba will closely watch the performance of the newly minted Altaba over the next 1-2 years, and could make a privatization bid with Softbank if it feels the company is undermining its own stock.
Yahoo to morph into Altaba
Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) co-founder Jerry Yang never would have dreamed a decade ago that the ground-breaking search engine he co-founded might someday morph into a Chinese e-commerce company called Alibaba (NYSE: BABA). But that’s pretty much what has just happened, with official word from Yang’s former baby that it will change its name to Altaba following the pending sale of its core Internet business. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Meitu’s Hong Kong IPO plan is likely to get a positive reception due to strong sentiment for Chinese tech companies, while a plan to list US-focused Media.net in China via a backdoor IPO is likely to fail due to numerous obstacles.
Meitu eyes HK listing by year end
A couple of IPO stories are in the headlines, including what could become the largest listing for a Chinese tech firm this year by Meitu, operator of an app that helps users make self-enhanced selfies. The other deal looks quite unusual, and has a Chinese investor group buying US advertising services startup Media.net, with plans to list the company in China through a backdoor-style process. In all my years covering China this is the first time I’ve seen this kind of deal, which looks both interesting but also quite speculative.
Each of these deals is quite different, and both have one or two notable points. Meitu looks most notable not only for its size, which could be up to $1 billion, but also for its location. IPOs for this kind of high-tech company have traditionally come in New York, and more recently on China’s Nasdaq-style ChiNext board, but are seldom seen in Hong Kong. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Yihaodian could regain momentum in China’s online grocery market under an aggressive 1 billion yuan promotion by new owner JD.com and strong support from former owner Walmart.
Yihaodian launches 1 bln yuan promotion
One major obstacle for foreign companies in China is their reluctance to engage in the kind of cut-throat price wars that are all too common in many of the nation’s huge but extremely competitive emerging markets. Such reluctance was a big factor behind the disappointing progress for Walmart’s (NYSE: WMT) local e-commerce venture Yihaodian, and prompted the US retailer to sell the company in June in exchange for shares of local e-commerce powerhouse JD.com (Nasdaq: JD). Now we’re getting word that JD is preparing to position Yihaodian as its flagship online grocery store, and is getting set to launch a massive price war in its bid to achieve that target. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Baidu’s rapid expansion of its global mapping services is mostly targeted at Chinese traveling abroad, and is unlikely to attract many local users because better services are already available in most markets.
Baidu maps South America
Still suffering from a spate of negative news at home, leading search engine Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is trying to draw attention to the more upbeat subject of its global expansion that is slowly inching forward. The company has squarely focused its global drive on emerging markets, and is continuing that trend with word that it’s launching new editions of its mapping services for most of South America. Baidu has already launched a version of its core search business in Brazil, and many will probably view this move to launch mapping services in 13 countries as a prelude to future launches for search service in those markets. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Baidu will suffer more damage to its revenue and profits after new actions by China’s Cyberspace Administration, creating a potential opportunity for Bing or even Yahoo in China’s lucrative search market.
Baidu’s search woes offer opportunity for Bing, Yahoo
The woes for Internet search giant Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) continue, with word that China’s Internet censor is ordering the already hobbled company to cleanse itself of inappropriate sites in its search results. But whereas previous crackdowns have focused on politically sensitive content, this latest crackdown focuses on sites of companies that may be engaged in fraud or making inflated or bogus claims. The entire situation looks set to make a major dent in Baidu’s growth story, and could even see the company’s revenue shrink as it finds a new equilibrium.Read Full Post…
Bottom line: LeEco will try to buy out Coolpad later this year in its new position as the company’s largest stakeholder, while its plans for a massive Silicon Valley campus stand a less than 50 percent chance of getting completed.
LeEco boosts Coolpad stake
The phenomenal but problematic entertainment superstar LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104) is in a couple of big headlines as the new week begins, led by word that a new transaction has made it the largest stakeholder in struggling smartphone maker Coolpad (HKEx: 2369). Rumors were flying thick and fast last week that LeEco, formerly known as LeTV, was on the cusp of an outright takeover of Coolpad, and this latest move certainly looks like a possible prelude to such an bid. Meantime, separate media reports are confirming news from earlier this year saying LeEco has purchased a piece of prime Silicon Valley land that it hopes to develop as a campus for its future US headquarters.Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Alibaba’s new self-calculated valuation of $185 billion looks realistic and even possibly low, but the stock will remain under pressure until the intentions of big stakeholders SoftBank and Yahoo become clearer.
Alibaba estimates value at $185 bln
It’s not often that you get to see a major company put a value on itself, but that’s exactly what we’re getting as a result of new information coming from this week’s sale of nearly $8 billion worth of stock in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA). I’ll end the suspense right away and say that Alibaba has valued itself at about $185 billion with the latest sale of a big block of its stock held by longtime Japanese backer SoftBank. While that number looks quite impressive, it’s also noteworthy because it values Alibaba quite a bit lower than arch-rival Tencent (HKEx: 700), as the pair jostle for the title of China’s biggest Internet company. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: New sales of Alibaba and Lenovo shares by big stakeholders partly reflect disappointment in each stock’s performance by the seller, as both companies face issues that could stunt their medium-term growth.
Big stakeholders sell Alibaba, Lenovo shares
The folks at e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and PC leader Lenovo (HKEx: 992) are licking their wounds today, after each was dumped by a major major shareholder. In the first case longtime backer SoftBank has just sold off a big chunk of its Alibaba holdings, raising a hefty $7.9 billion in the process. The second deal has Internet giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) looking to sell about $200 million worth of Lenovo stock. Alibaba and SoftBank are trying to put a positive spin on their development, but the bottom line is that both Alibaba and Lenovo stock have become disappointments recently for all investors. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Baidu’s new policy of greater transparency in its search results is long overdue, and is unlikely to have a major impact on its business due to lack of other choices for advertisers in the China search market.
Baidu cleans up search site
What a difference a week makes. After coming under unprecedented assault for putting profits above everything else, leading search engine Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) has just done a major overhaul of its core search service to make it more transparent and useful. The overhaul was long overdue but was hardly voluntary, and only came after the company faced the biggest crisis since its founding in 2000.
It’s somewhat ironic that this particular crisis took so long to come, since the kinds of misleading practices at the center of the controversy are widely known and central to Baidu’s huge profitability. Those practices include selling preferred positions on search results pages to advertisers who pay the highest prices, even though that fact was never clearly conveyed to Internet users. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: LeEco’s plan to develop a major Silicon Valley office on land purchased from Yahoo reflects the rapid rise and global ambitions of the former, and the accelerating decline of the latter.
LeEco eyes new Silicon Valley home
A new report involving a Silicon Valley land deal is shining a spotlight on Chinese Internet giant LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104) and US counterpart Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), illustrating the rapid rise of the former and accelerating descent of the latter. The deal itself is rather mundane, involving a 48.6 acre plot of undeveloped land that Yahoo bought a decade ago for $100 million near its Silicon Valley headquarters. LeEco is reportedly eyeing the land for development of a new campus, some 2 years after it set up its original dual US headquarters in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.
LeEco, formerly known as LeTV, is one of China’s fastest rising online entertainment companies that is increasingly moving into a wide array of new product areas. Two of those are e-commerce and smart cars, and I suspect the Silicon Valley expansion would house both of those initiatives. LeEco is also moving into film production, though that element of its US efforts is probably based out of its Los Angeles office. Read Full Post…
