BABA - Alibaba Group Holding Limited

Better Buy: Alibaba vs. Alphabet

These two technology giants are leaders in their respective markets. Discover what makes one a better investment choice.

Even a Dubious Warren Buffett Can’t Stop This Crypto-World Casino Czar

(Bloomberg) -- When Justin Sun met Warren Buffett for dinner in January, he wasn’t seeking advice on stocks. The crypto mogul had spent a record $4.6 million at a charity auction for the opportunity to lecture the world’s most famous investor on the benefits of Bitcoin.It was exactly the sort of behavior that Sun’s known for -- abrasive, ostentatious and, ultimately, impossible to ignore. Like the $200 billion crypto industry itself, he is young and hungry for the respect of traditional financiers like Buffett, who deems Bitcoin basically worthless.Still shy of his 30th birthday, Sun founded one of the largest blockchain platforms, Tron, in 2017 and turned it into a virtual Las Vegas with gambling apps. He’s rubbed shoulders with Apple Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founders, hired celebrity endorsers like the late Kobe Bryant and drawn accusations of plagiarism, which he has denied, more than once. What he says and does can move crypto prices, and his aggressive acquisitions have earned him both admiration and notoriety in the blockchain community on his way to consolidating power.“I’m a true believer of blockchain. It’s once in a lifetime,” he said in a rare in-depth interview from a luxury office suite overlooking Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. “It’s only people who don’t understand it who question me.”Making his personal fortune by embracing Bitcoin as early as 2012, and now by his own account worth somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Sun is part of a second wave of crypto entrepreneurs who envision putting more than just digital money and payments on a decentralized platform. Last week, Sun and his team touted an upcoming major update to Tron, which will include more privacy features and enterprise applications.Newer blockchains like Tron let developers build so-called decentralized apps, or dapps, on their platforms. Ethereum is the foremost among them, with its co-founder Vitalik Buterin offering a simple analogy: if Bitcoin is a pocket calculator, platforms with dapps are akin to smartphones. But unlike Android or iPhone apps, dapps are decentralized in the sense that they aren’t run on one server or by any single entity.Sun’s Tron has 342 active dapps and more than 230,000 users, both roughly half Ethereum’s totals, according to data tracker Dapp Review. It’s been accused by researchers like Digital Asset Research of copying Ethereum’s code without attribution, and by Buterin himself of stealing words from other projects’ whitepapers. Tron and Sun have denied both accusations.The bulk of business done on Tron today revolves around the largely unregulated field of crypto gambling, with a January Dapp Review report describing it as “Las Vegas on the blockchain.” In the first quarter, casino dapps comprised 92% of Tron’s $411 million total transaction volume, according to the Binance-owned researcher. Sun said the Dapp Review estimate was inaccurate and over-stated the gambling activity on the Tron blockchain. In fact, such transactions are only a fraction of the total, he said.Sun “identified niche customer bases, namely gamers and gamblers, that have great reasons to use blockchain, drive a lot of transactions, and are crypto savvy,” said Matthew Graham, chief executive officer of Sino Global Capital, a Beijing-based blockchain consultancy.Since its inception, Tron has been augmented with the acquisitions of live-streaming service DLive, briefly the exclusive online home of YouTube star PewDiePie, and file-sharing service BitTorrent Inc. Through a partnership with Samsung Electronics Co., Tron dapps can be downloaded via one of the world’s most widely distributed mobile app stores.Sun has proven himself an able marketer, raising $800,000 in under five minutes through a public token sale for his lending platform, called Just. He also commands an audience of two million Twitter followers.But he’s also been challenged on basic information. While Sun said he often covers the $5 million quarterly operational costs for Tron, Ryan Dennis, a spokesman for the nonprofit Tron Foundation that coordinates the blockchain platform’s operations, denied that figure -- saying they won’t be able to get accurate cost numbers “due to the coronavirus pandemic changing everything on a day-to-day basis.”As a sociology student in the U.S., Sun founded an online magazine about current affairs -- though it closed after he was accused of plagiarism by another author. Sun has denied the accusation, saying he merely imitated the author’s style.He then made the switch to tech.After an unsuccessful attempt to set up China operations for American crypto company Ripple in 2014, Sun went back to the drawing board with $5 million of venture-capital money from backers like IDG Capital and ChinaEquity Group. He tried almost every hot idea in China’s internet space, finally finding success in Peiwo, which let users connect with random strangers via voice messages. That app would later be slammed by China’s top state news agency for spreading vulgar and pornographic content.On social media, he billed himself as Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma’s first millennial protégé, since he was picked up in 2015 by the billionaire’s MBA program. When fellow tech entrepreneurs ran into cash crunches, he was often quick to say he would lend them money. He said he had a 100 million-yuan ($14 million) charity budget for 2019, part of which was distributed in cash giveaway campaigns via his Weibo account.Sun’s dinner with Buffett is still the banner image on his Twitter profile. The meeting had been scheduled for last July, but three days before the planned date Sun rescheduled, citing a bout of kidney stones. Later that week, he took a selfie and then live-streamed himself with San Francisco’s Bay Bridge in the background to rebut a news report that he was under Chinese border control. He then apologized on Weibo to the Chinese regulators and public for his “excessive self-promotion.” He was banned from the microblogging site at the end of 2019. (Sun now has a team, including a photographer, to manage his Twitter and Instagram accounts.)Read more: Buffett Lunch Mystery Deepens as His Date Apologizes to SocietyWhen Sun finally sat down with Buffett, his entreaties crashed against a wall of skepticism.“It’s not just Buffett, the Chinese government also has the same attitude,” Sun said.Sun shut down his Beijing offices last year, after China launched a renewed crackdown on a crypto industry it views with suspicion. He said he hasn’t returned to mainland China since the end of 2018, though he’s not prohibited from doing so.During the Covid-19 pandemic, the jet-setting entrepreneur has been stuck in Hong Kong. But he has continued to stumble into controversy. In February, Sun bought the social network Steemit, billed as “owned and operated by its users,” along with 30% voting control over its platform. Fearing that gave Sun too much power, part of the Steemit community temporarily froze his stake and then split the blockchain into a whole new branch.“His playbook might be the optimal strategy during the early barbaric growth period of the crypto industry,” said Wayne Zhao, analyst and managing partner of researcher TokenInsight. “You are nothing without people’s attention, no matter if it’s good or bad.”(Updates with Sun’s comment in the eighth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

China’s JD.com, NetEase Win Hong Kong Approval for Listings

(Bloomberg) -- JD.com Inc. and NetEase Inc. have won approvals to forge ahead with their Hong Kong share sales that could raise billions of dollars, as political turmoil leaves the city’s status as an international finance center clouded in uncertainty.Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. approved the secondary listing applications by the U.S.-listed Chinese tech companies, according to people familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified discussing private matters. Online gaming firm NetEase filed a preliminary prospectus with the exchange later on Friday, a confirmation that it has received the official green light.NetEase plans to list in Hong Kong on June 11, while China’s No. 2 online retailer JD aims to debut on June 18, Bloomberg News has reported. JD’s stock sale could raise at least $2 billion to help the e-commerce firm shore up its position in an increasingly competitive home market.Representatives for Hong Kong’s stock exchange, JD and NetEase declined to comment.Escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing are increasing risks for Chinese companies like JD and NetEase who seek to broaden their investor base. U.S. capital markets are becoming frosty toward Chinese firms, and fears over the impact of national security legislation set to be imposed on Hong Kong, including the resumption of protests in the city, have sent the local market into convulsions.What Hong Kong Losing Its ‘Special Status’ Would Mean: QuickTakeThe twin debuts would follow Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s $13 billion Hong Kong stock sale last year, hailed as a homecoming for Chinese companies and a win for Hong Kong stock exchange, which lost many of the largest tech corporations to U.S. bourses because it didn’t allow dual-class share voting at the time -- a requirement that’s since been relaxed.Shares in U.S.-listed Chinese companies have see-sawed since senators overwhelmingly approved legislation on May 20 that could bar the country’s firms from American exchanges. The decision cast a pall of uncertainty over hundreds of billions of dollars of shares in some of the world’s best-known companies.(Adds NetEase filing in second paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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MARKETS: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq close lower after late-day selloff — YF Premium is bullish on Alibaba (BABA)

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre joins Seana Smith to break down the day's price action in stocks as well as a long in Alibaba (BABA), a Yahoo Finance Premium Investment Idea.

Alibaba extends its reach in China as coronavirus outbreak opens doors

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is emerging as one of China's biggest corporate winners of the coronavirus crisis, gaining the opportunity to expand its businesses and solidify its status as a critical part of the country's socio-economic engine. While many companies are hurting from disruption caused by the virus, Alibaba has seen traffic at its online marketplaces shoot higher and demand grow for services like food delivery. The company, which emerged as China's leading e-commerce company after the 2003 SARS outbreak, is now positioning itself as a hirer and a lender too, advertising for over 100,000 jobs and offering billions of dollars in loans to small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) at a time when many others are retrenching.

Alibaba Hunts for a Million Influencers Keen to Make Big Money

(Bloomberg) -- Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. pioneered the use of live-streaming hosts to sell everything from lipstick to smartphones in China. Now, the e-commerce giant wants to repeat that success globally with the help of a million influencers on forums from TikTok to Instagram.AliExpress, the company’s online marketplace for shoppers outside China, is on the hunt for social media personalities to hawk wares on its online malls around the world. It’s looking to attract more than 100,000 content creators this year to its recently launched AliExpress Connect, rising to over a million in three years. The platform offers a matchmaking service, helping pair social media influencers with brands and merchants looking to market their products. Its initial focus is Europe, where Russia, France, Spain and Poland comprise the majority of users.Alibaba hopes to replicate the success it’s enjoyed with so-called key opinion leaders driving sales on its China online marketplace Taobao. “For both Taobao and AliExpress, social content is a way to diversify offerings, but not to generate revenue,” Yuan Yuan, head of operations for AliExpress, told Bloomberg News. Influencers will help users stick with the platform instead of just making a one-time purchase. “The goal is to accumulate users, keep them there and encourage them to remain active.”China’s largest e-commerce company currently gets just a fraction of its retail revenue from outside its home country, but it’s harbored bigger international ambitions for years. The move marks Alibaba’s latest global push and comes at a time when Covid-19 is fueling an unprecedented boom in social media. The company’s rivals, including TikTok proprietor ByteDance Ltd. and Tencent-backed Pinduoduo Inc., are playing catch-up in live streaming and other means of social commerce championed by the Taobao Live app.Global social giants like Facebook Inc. have also added new features that support online shopping. In the U.S., more than 75 million social-network users aged 14 or older are expected to make at least one online purchase this year, up over 17% from 2019, according to research firm eMarketer.Influencers and content creators can sign up for Connect using TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and other social accounts. They can then solicit assignments from AliExpress merchants seeking help in promoting their goods or services. This gives the influencer options, from merely reposting the seller’s social media posts to creating original videos. Commission fees can be based on the sales the influencers generate.AliExpress is one of two Alibaba online bazaars for international buyers, the other being the Southeast-Asia-focused Lazada. AliExpress merchants are mainly small, export-oriented businesses in China, but global brands like Samsung and Oral-B have increasingly set up shop on the platform, targeting regional markets. Its top consumer markets include Russia, the U.S., Brazil and Spain.Yuan said AliExpress aims to help at least 100 of its army of a million influencers earn an annual income of more than $1 million within three years. “Only if they can make money will they be motivated to create good content for our platform,” she said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Alibaba Exec stresses the importance of small businesses to the U.S. economy

John Caplan, Alibaba.com President of North America and Europe joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to break down the Alibaba’s growth and share how the company practicing business in the U.S during the coronavirus pandemic.

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These 4 Chinese Stocks Are Too Risky to Own

Luckin Coffee and three other Chinese stocks could be in the blast zone of newly proposed regulations.

Did Pinduoduo Just Prove the Bears Wrong?

Pinduoduo's (NASDAQ: PDD) stock recently surged to an all-time high after the company posted its first-quarter earnings. The Chinese e-commerce company's revenue rose 44% annually to 6.54 billion yuan ($924 million), beating estimates by $189 million but marking its slowest growth rate since its IPO.

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ByteDance Hit $3 Billion in Net Profit Last Year

(Bloomberg) -- TikTok’s parent ByteDance Ltd. generated more than $3 billion of net profit on over $17 billion in revenue last year, figures that show the world’s most valuable startup is still growing at a brisk rate, according to people familiar with the matter.The revenue for last year was more than double the company’s tally of about $7.4 billion in 2018, propelled by phenomenal growth in user traffic that’s drawn advertisers away from Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. The people asked not to be identified because the financial details are private.ByteDance has emerged as one of the tech industry’s most surprising success stories, an innovative Chinese company that is challenging the global dominance of U.S. internet giants. It draws some 1.5 billion monthly active users to a family of apps that includes the TikTok short-video platform, its Chinese twin Douyin and the news service Toutiao. This month, the company poached Walt Disney Co. streaming czar Kevin Mayer to become chief executive officer of TikTok.The company owes much of its success to TikTok, now the online repository of choice for lip-synching and dance videos by American teens. The ambitious company is also pushing aggressively into a plethora of new arenas from gaming and search to music. ByteDance could fetch a valuation of between $150 billion and $180 billion in an initial public offering, a premium relative to sales of as much as 20% to social media giant Tencent thanks to a larger global footprint and burgeoning games business, estimated Ke Yan, Singapore-based analyst with DZT Research.“None of the Chinese tech companies has achieved this level of success in the global market before ByteDance,” he said, adding neither social media company harbors much debt. “The fact that ByteDance is making profit, if true, and sitting on a $6 billion cash pile means that it is not in a rush at all to come to market to raise capital, and therefore less likely to offer the shares at a more reasonable price for IPO investors.”ByteDance, led by Zhang Yiming, is becoming a viable rival to the dominant American online behemoths, Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. Facebook unit Instagram brought in about $20 billion in advertising revenue in 2019, Bloomberg previously reported. Google said its video unit YouTube recorded $15.1 billion in ad sales last year.ByteDance representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.That success has come despite American lawmakers raising concerns about privacy and censorship. In a rare bipartisan effort in Washington, Republican Senator Tom Cotton and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last year urged an investigation into TikTok, labeling it a national security threat.President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies, tweeting that the platforms attempt to silence conservative voices. Twitter Inc. on Tuesday added a fact-checking link to two of Trump’s tweets to his 80 million followers.ByteDance is strengthening its operations in newer arenas such as e-commerce and gaming. This year, it kicked off a wave of hiring and envisions hitting 40,000 new jobs in 2020, hoping to match headcount of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. at a time technology corporations across the globe are furloughing or reducing staff.The company had very preliminary discussions about an initial public offering last year, but is in no rush to go public given its financial performance, people have said. It now has more than $6 billion of cash on hand, the people said.ByteDance, which is backed by SoftBank Group Corp., General Atlantic and Sequoia, is already the world’s most valuable startup, according to researcher CB Insights. Some private trades recently valued the Chinese company between $105 billion and $110 billion on the secondary markets, Bloomberg News previously reported. It has also traded as high as $140 billion, one person said, making it one of the most highly valued private companies of all time.(Updates with Trump tweets in ninth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Are Your Chinese Stocks On The U.S.' Hit List?

The U.S. relationship with China is already tense over key issues. So now's time to know how exposed you are to Chinese stocks like BABA stock.

China's top short video apps and e-commerce giants pally up

JD.com, the online retailer that is Alibaba's long-time nemesis, announced Wednesday a strategic partnership with Kuaishou, the main rival of TikTok's sibling in China, Douyin. The thinking goes that video platforms can leverage the trust that influencers instill in their audience to tout products ranging from cosmetics to electronics. Much of the transaction happens over live broadcasting -- a bit misleading as these apps are billed as "short video" apps with live video features -- which allows for real-time interaction between merchants and shoppers.

Tencent To Invest $70B In Cloud, AI Projects In China, As Country Looks To Move Past Pandemic

China's Tencent Holdings Ltd. (OTC: TCEHY) has committed nearly $70 billion for investment in the emerging technology sector in the country over the next five years, CNBC reported Tuesday.What Happened The WeChat parent company will invest in startups working with technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing, according to CNBC.Tencent's pledge comes at a time when the Chinese government has called on the business sector to advance "new infrastructure" as a way forward from the economic impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.The other projects in the new infrastructure plan include 5G mobile network technology and electric vehicles.China's Premier Li Keqiang on Friday announced that the government would issue nearly $140 billion in bonds to help fund some of these efforts, as reported by CNBC earlier.Tencent on Monday said it was also looking to raise up to $20 billion in a new bond offering to professional investors.Why It Matters The technology giant trails rivals Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: BABA) and Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) in some of the emerging technology.Tencent's cloud subsidiary had only about 18% of the Chinese market share, compared to Alibaba's 46.4% at the end of the fourth quarter last year, according to data from research firm Canalys, reported by Reuters.Alibaba further committed nearly $28 billion towards cloud computing in April.Price Action Tencent stock closed 2.33% higher at $53.91 per share in the otc market on Tuesday.See more from Benzinga * Global Music Revenue Set To Double By 2030 Despite Pandemic Impact: Goldman Sachs Report * McDonald's, Starbucks, Subway Part Of China's Central Digital Currency Pilot: Report * Chinese Tech Giants Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, Others Part Of Country's National Blockchain Committee(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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SoftBank’s Vision Fund to Explore Sale of OSIsoft Stake

(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. is exploring a sale of a minority stake in OSIsoft LLC that could be worth more than $1.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.SoftBank is working with a financial adviser to sell the stake in the industrial software company, which is held by its Vision Fund, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. The move is part of SoftBank’s new focus on raising cash, they said.The Japanese firm’s plans aren’t final and it could opt to keep the stake, the people said.Representatives for the Vision Fund and OSIsoft declined to comment.SoftBank Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son has said he would sell off about $42 billion in assets to finance stock buybacks and pay down debt. SoftBank disclosed it’s selling shares in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and it’s in talks to sell about $20 billion of T-Mobile US Inc., Bloomberg News reported.SoftBank’s Vision Fund has unwound some investments, including dumping its entire stake in chipmaker Nvidia Corp. in February 2019. The fund, which has made bets on companies like WeWork that have cratered, sold a nearly 50% stake in dog walking startup Wag Labs back to the company last year.San Leandro-California based OSIsoft sells software into sectors including oil and gas, utilities and pharmaceutical development, according to its website.SoftBank acquired a “significant minority stake” in the company in 2017 from backers including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and TCV, according to a statement. Its investment was worth a bit less than $1 billion, a person familiar with the matter said at the time.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Frank Sands Adds 5 Stocks to Portfolio

Guru releases portfolio for the 1st quarter Continue reading...

Top Analyst Reports for Alibaba, Chevron & Shopify

Top Analyst Reports for Alibaba, Chevron & Shopify

Alibaba (BABA) Surpasses Q4 Earnings & Revenue Estimates

Alibaba Group Holding's (BABA) fiscal fourth-quarter 2020 earnings are driven by a steady improvement in core commerce and strong cloud business.

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: The Clorox Company, MGP Ingredients, Middlesex Water, Baidu and Alibaba

The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: The Clorox Company, MGP Ingredients, Middlesex Water, Baidu and Alibaba