Hello and welcome again to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of current occasions shaping the Chinese tech panorama and what they imply to individuals in the remainder of the world. The earnings season is right here. This week, long-time archrivals within the Chinese web battlefield — Alibaba and Tencent — made some massive revelations about their future. First off, let’s have a look at Alibaba’s long-awaited secondary itemizing and annual procuring bonanza.
Forget in regards to the quantity
It’s that point of 12 months. On November 11, Alibaba introduced it generated $38.four billion price of gross merchandise worth in the course of the annual Single’s Day procuring competition, in any other case generally known as Double 11. It smashed the report and grabbed native headlines once more, however the occasion means little apart from an enormous publicity win for the corporate and showcasing the artwork of drumming up gross sales.
GMV is commonly used interchangeably with gross sales in e-commerce. That’s problematic as a result of the quantity takes under consideration all transactions, together with refunded objects, and it’s on no account reflective of an organization’s precise income. There are quite a few methods to juice the determine, too, as I wrote final 12 months. Presales started days upfront, incentives had been doled out to spur last-minute orders and no refunds may very well be processed till November 12.
Even Jiang Fan, the boss of Alibaba’s e-commerce enterprise and the youngest amongst Alibaba’s 38 most essential decision-makers, downplayed the quantity: “I never worry about transaction volumes. Numbers don’t matter. What’s most important is making Single’s Day fun and turning it into a real festival.”
Indeed, Alibaba put collectively one other 12 months of what’s equal to the Super Bowl halftime present. Taylor Swift and different worldwide massive names graced the stage because the night gala was live-streamed and watched by hundreds of thousands throughout the globe.
Returning residence
Alibaba goes forward with its secondary itemizing in Hong Kong on the heels of stories that it might delay the sale attributable to ongoing political unrest within the city-state. The firm is cash-rich, however itemizing nearer to its prospects can doubtlessly ease among the stress arising from a brand new period of unstable U.S.-China relationships.
Alibaba is issuing 500 million new shares with a further over-allotment choice of 75 million shares for worldwide underwriters, it stated in an organization weblog. Reports have put the dimensions of its providing between $10 billion and $15 billion, down from the sooner rumored $20 billion.
The large has lengthy expressed it intends to come back residence. In 2014, the e-commerce behemoth missed out on Hong Kong as a result of the native alternate didn’t permit dual-class buildings, a kind of group frequent in know-how corporations that grants completely different voting rights for various shares. The large as an alternative went public in New York and raised the most important preliminary public providing in historical past at $25 billion.
“When Alibaba Group went public in 2014, we missed out on Hong Kong with regret. Hong Kong is one of the world’s most important financial centers. Over the last few years, there have been many encouraging reforms in Hong Kong’s capital market. During this time of ongoing change, we continue to believe that the future of Hong Kong remains bright. We hope we can contribute, in our small way, and participate in the future of Hong Kong,” stated chairman and chief government Daniel Zhang in an announcement.
Missing out on Alibaba had additionally been a supply of regret for the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. Charles Li, chief government of the HKEX, admitted that dropping Alibaba to New York had compelled the bourse to reform. The HKEX has since added dual-class shares and…
