Alibaba Opens Offices In Europe To Expand Business

Alibaba establish offices in Germany, France, and Italy, to lure merchants to its network.

Alibaba Group is about to expand itself in the global market. The Hangzhou-based company would establish offices across the European region in an attempt to lure merchants to its network, since it hired Michael Evans as president. The ecommerce giant would be opening so-called “embassies” in Germany, Italy, and France with an objective to position the firm as the “gateway to China” for European vendors.

“In the past, it was really only multinationals that could afford to sell their products internationally. But in the last 10 years, much has changed”, Mr. Evans stated, elaborating upon the plan as enabling “the world to sell to China and to help China sell to the world”. Alibaba News disclosed that Mr. Evans pointed to estimations that the Chinese middle class would grow from 300,000,000 to 500,000,000 in the upcoming decade. “This middle class consumer wants authentic, high-quality international products,” he stated.

Organizations ranging from luxury businesses, such as Burberry, Spanish clothing and accessories store, have established stores on the online trading enterprise’s eBay-like network, Tmall, which aims to lure branded vendors. Alibaba News today reported that nevertheless, the company’s image for failing to battle with counterfeit and bogus goods has played a role in keeping some merchants away. Its chairman, Jack Ma, confessed in a dialogue on Tuesday that the issue of counterfeits “leaves visible wounds on Alibaba.”

“I don’t believe success can be built on dishonesty”, he spoke to Chinese official press agency Xinhua, rejecting some opinions that the company benefitted from fakes, which increase sales and take occasional totals for the company.

Alibaba Breaking News affirmed Chinese giant’s CEO Daniel Zhang statement that it would be promoting the sale of goods from other states to Chinese customers as part of its Single Day sales fiesta on November 11. The said day is identified as singles day for its “double eleven” date, and promoted as the “anti-Valentine’s day” where clients purchase something for themselves rather than for a collaborator.

Singles Day is the People Republic of China’s biggest online purchasing day. In 2014, the company succeeded in setting a record as its trading platforms secured $9,300,000,000 in sales.

In 2015, Alibaba has been adversely affected by the most populated country’s staggering economy, which has decreased sales to their bottommost growth rates in over 3 years last quarter. The company’s decision to establish its offices in the European Union has been taken at a time when its cloud division, AliCloud, has established its first datacenter in the U.S.

It is quite likely that Alibaba’s initiative to open another U.S. datacenter would threaten the interests of its rivals. The scalability of business is an essential feature in growth and expansion of any organization. The same is a priority for Alibaba.

 

Bernstein Believes Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Fundamentals Seems Attractive

Bernstein reiterated an Outperform rating and revised down the price target from $120 to $100 on Alibaba stock

In a research published yesterday, Bernstein restated an Outperform rating along with a new price target of $100 down from previous $120 on stock of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The sell side firm thinks that the Chinese company’s fundamentals look attractive despite near term volatility, according to Alibaba stock news.

Bernstein research notes that the company shares have tanked around 48% year to date based on number of issues including falling PC monetization, more than expected conversion to mobile, current economic chaos in China and margin pressure because of new investments. Though, the firm said that Alibaba’s fundamentals still look attractive and that these issues have caused in the share price being substantially mis-priced.

Analysts at Bernstein also anticipate monetization rates of retail in China to grow year-over-year in the upcoming quarters. They expect that this will make it to revenue progress rates that are significantly higher than GMV volume growth and the Street’s forecasts. The research firm thinks that this might be a significant catalyst for Baba stock.

Moreover, the equity research firm expects fiscal year 2017 revenues, non-GAAP EPS, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to improve in the mid 20s perhaps faster. It also sees Alibaba gross merchandise volume as the most significant metric to measure company’s performance and forecasts that in fiscal year 2017, Baba’s revenues, earnings and EBITDA will grow approximately by 30%.

Apart from this, the analysts at Bernstein stated: “Alibaba’s margins will be determined in large part by management’s discretionary decisions vis-à-vis investments in new opportunities, such as cloud, mobile, O2O, media, international (both inbound into China and AliExpress), or in strengthening the core through improved logistics. We currently expect FY17 non-GAAP EBITDA margins of 49%, but would not be surprised if results were significantly different (plus or minus 200 bps), as management decides to invest more or less on new opportunities.”

Moreover, they believe that the e-commerce giant has several opportunities to knock on like international markets and cloud; these will revamp the future growth. It was also highlighted that such prospects aren’t revealed in the Street’s forecasts.

Along with this news, Alibaba Group is further spreading its wings and has found a new way to expand which is Sports. The e-commerce company, in an association with Yunfeng Capital and Sina Corporation and has started a new business venture known as Alibaba Group Sports.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. stock was down 0.02% to $63.82 at close of market on Thursday.  The e-commerce giant’s market capitalization is $159.06 billion. The Chinese company has 52 week high and low stock price of $63.92 and $58, respectively, according to Alibaba stock analysis.

 

Alibaba Makes Another Investment In SingPost

 

Alibaba is now the second largest stakeholder in SingPost

Alibaba Group Holding is the Chinese e-commerce giant which has captivated the information technology sector of China. In a short span of time, the company has grown itself immensely and it is now valued at a massive $216 billion in the market. Alibaba is the largest B2B business as well of the world however the only negative thing about the company is that its international market presence is negligible. A company of that size should penetrate in the international markets and create a healthy revenue stream for it but this is not the case with the Chinese online retailer.

Despite of trying a lot to penetrate in the United States as well as other markets internationally, it somehow never leaves expanding in Asia. According to Forbes, relating latest Alibaba news, Alibaba Group has made a new investment in SingPost in order to bolster the logistics presence within Asia. It is believed that the company is determined to ‘deepen’ the ties with Singapore National Post or SingPost, the postal service provider of Singapore. It is an attempt by the company to grow its business internationally in the coming times.

Forbes reported, “Alibaba, which last year invested $249 million for a 10.35% stake in Singapore Post Ltd, has agreed to spend another $138.6 million to acquire an additional 5% stake. The company will hold 14.51% of SingPost upon completion of the deal, which is subject to the approval of SingPost shareholders and Singaporean authorities, Alibaba announced in a statement today.”

Furthermore, Alibaba is all set to invest further in the subsidiary of SingPost, Quantium Solutions International at $67.85 million and for a 34 percent stake in it. The subsidiary of SingPost provides logistics and warehousing services and solutions to 10 countries or more through Asia Pacific.

Quantium Solutions International will now be a joint venture between the Chinese e-commerce giant and SingPost. The Chief Executive of the company, Daniel Zhang, stated “This additional investment into SingPost and establishment of a joint venture signify our commitment in expanding our global logistics footprint, which in turn will help Chinese businesses sell, and global brands deliver more easily around the world.”

It is known that this partnership will now further enhance and improve the durability, reliability, and efficiency of the company’s delivery to most parts of the world. According to a spokesperson of Alibaba on latest Alibaba updates, the deal will also help Singapore Postal service to become a common regional logistics platform as it is going through a rough patch lately. Alibaba is the second largest company to hold stakes in SingPost after Singapore Telecommunications.

 

Alibaba backed MYbank Launches in China To Serve “The Little Guys” Online

 

Latest Alibaba news is regarding the opening of MYbank. We all are aware of the massive e-commerce business that the company has in China and also the U.S IPO that was recording breaking and held by it last year. However, there is a lot more to the Hangzhou based Chinese company than only owning a e-commerce business. As of today, the latest edition is an online bank.

Backed by the e-commerce giant, MYbank is an online bank which had been opened yesterday with an aim to provide the services “for the little guys.” This bank service is an all-digital one. This suggests that there are no physical branches of the bank but still it would be open all the time. It is particulary for those who are ending up shore changed by what current norms are in the banking system. SMEs that are struggling to get themselves settled in the financial bracket for services and loans and also it is for the people who have accessing the branches of banks while residing in the rural areas.

Alibaba news reports that the president for Ant Financial expressed that it is the mission of the company to address the needs of the people in China who do not have much access to the financial services.

Furthermore, he said that the service will provide flexible loans to small enterprises or even small ones, the services are aimed for the “little guys” of the country and not the rich ones.

In the start, the service is aiming to provide up to $800,000 of loans to SMEs, entrepreneurs, enterprises and consumers. However, it still awaits the final green signal from the authorities before pursuing with its purse of $640 million.

MYbank has a belief that customers can get the savings without the processes that are expensive and elongated systems that conventional banks have to deal with. For instance, there is a usage of cloud computing instead of IT systems that the physical banks have and its staff is only 300 employees due to have a complete digital presence.

Not only that MYbank is capable to be disruptive, specifically with the backing of Alibaba that has a huge presence in the native country but Jing has aim to also work with traditional peers in the country pertaining to banks.

It is to be noted that Chinese giant is not the only one going for banking. Tencent had piloted WeBank which was the first digital bank in the country. Tencent is the creator of WeChat which is the most popular chat app in China. Tencent and Alibaba are quite well known competitors and are looking towards monetizing and enhancing the presence globally.