DOI: 10.25625/uug9s3
title: Alibaba Financial Data

description: Alibaba has had a bad week when it was revealed that it will donate $15 Billion to ‘common prosperity’, really this just means that it will contribute more to development projects, which is already does as evidenced by its massive financing of startups already.Secondly, the breakup and re-organization of Ant Group, where it will still have a sizeable share. In both cases it’s likely to profit from the moves.Thirdly, $15 billion isn’t that much for Alibaba’s core revenue and growth in the Cloud and in Ads. So let’s get down to it with some of the facts.Ant Group is massive: According to the most recent numbers, Alipay has over 1.2 billion users overall, while its credit card platform Huabei had 190 million users, and its installment loan product Jiebei had 500 million users.Reported in June, the new lending company will be called Chongqing Ant Consumer Finance Co. It will be 50% owned by Alipay, with the other 50% coming from other companies, including some state-owned banks.The new company will also be liable for up to 30% of the loans it issues, which means the new company will need to hold more capital on its balance sheet, and will likely get a much lower valuation in the marketplace.This is all quite far and reasonable although Ant Group will have to hand over the precious data to the State. Not a big deal. That was bound to occur. Alibaba’s current market cap is just over $422 Billion, which makes no sense, that is, it’s currently undervalued. The P/E is now 18.77 that is very reasonable. Remember this company has income of nearly $23 Billion.At the end of August, the company pledged to donate $15.5 billion to China’s ‘Common Prosperity’ initiative . The money will be paid out over five years to support various technology and small business initiatives. It’s unclear at this stage whether Alibaba will receive any equity in return for the donations. It’s highly likely the donations won’t be fully without Alibaba profiting. China isn’t crazy, it just wants to spread the wealth around a bit better.So which other Chinese stocks appear very undervalued?$VIPS$BEKE$MOMO$YINN (as a long-term play)Do your own due diligence if you don’t believe me. If there is a correction of Western equities in October, 2021 or later before 2022, those are stock names I’d take a closer look at.While Alibaba is a huge company its growth in the Cloud and Ads should be able to absorb its serious setback. $15.5 billion is a lot of money, even for a company of Alibaba’s size. This sum is also in addition to a $2.75b fine imposed by China’s anti-monopoly regulator, which has already been paid. However it doesn’t justify the stock going much below $150, unless there is a strong push from short squeeze effort from other big investors.Chinese stocks will continue to go down as the sentiment and regulation puts a lot of uncertainty for their future in the West. However those companies are not drastically impacted from a business perspective. Alipay will likely also have to spin off its credit-scoring wing into a new joint venture that will also share with state-owned entities. Reuters has reported that Alipay will only retain a 35% stake in the new joint venture. So even in the shut-down of Ant Group as we knew it, Alibaba retains quite a sizeable portion of the businesses.Additionally BAT companies keep investing in very legit startups that will do incredibly well in the years ahead as China’s economy keeps maturing even with various bumps and dips on the macro landscape.While Western stocks are in a massive equity bubble, since a bull-market since 2009, Chinese stocks are nearing fair value. Alibaba has led investments worth more than $300 million into Chinese autonomous driving start-up DeepRoute.ai recently, for the most part its business as usual. Chinese regulation is actually good for its own particular version of state augmented capitalism. It can no longer tolerate monopolies abusing their position.On the operating side, things are looking good for BABA, as it continues to deliver sizeable business growth in its core business as well as in other areas, such as cloud computing. It’s cloud computing segment itself as a huge runway for growth with limited competition from Baidu, Huawei, Tencent and so forth. It’s the AWS of China for sure.Alibaba only owns 33% of Alipay, so the growth headwinds at Alipay aren’t likely to warrant Alibaba’s 50% haircut. Alibaba’s own investments are maturing, and ChinaTech is just beginning their global play with ByteDance, Xioami, JD.com and others. Alibaba’s moat is stronger in China than Amazon’s is in the U.S., which is saying a lot. Legitimate growth from JD.com and Pinduoduo keep Alibaba innovative. When you look at the E-commerce growth of $VIPS you begin to understand just how many winners can fit in China’s massive ecosystem of consumers.The exodus from Chinese stocks won’t last forever as as a whole those companies will grow faster than their American peers, who are concentrated in too few names. The U.S. will likely be 10-15 years late in its own common prosperity and antitrust regulation fixes to a broken Pyramid of U.S. capitalism. Few actually understand this and how the move is inevitable. So China is regulating technology is a superior way, not just building more innovative companies better, faster and with more of them. The EV sector in China is the perfect example. While the U.S. has about a dozen okay EV efforts, with Rivian and Lucid perhaps the most shiny among them, China has around 30x to 50x as many.China’s electric car sector is seeing rapid growth, with tens of thousands of companies jumping on the bandwagon and shares of Chinese electric car makers such as Nio and Xpeng surge, according to business database Qichacha. Alibaba is the most diversified Chinese company, and with State intervention it can only get stronger in the end, not weaker. When you do the math it should be a $1 trillion dollar company again by 2023 in terms of market cap. Right now it’s likely around at least 20% undervalued.Regulation in China is good, not bad. Antitrust, consumer protections and investor confidence will gain higher as more Billionaires understand that the common good is what’s important in China, not their personal wallets. The real-estate, technology, education and many other spaces will slowly be cleaned up. China’s long-term vision of innovation and economic superiority is rooted in master plans with layers and 5-year plans the likes of which make the U.S. corporate monopolies that aren’t regulated look like tyrants of an old outdated version of capitalism.Alibaba is not there for Jack Ma to be a celebrity but for China to improve itself economically for the benefit of all of its consumers. With Beijing as the hub and on the board rooms of these companies, China’s astounding growth can work in a cohesive harmony that won’t be possible in any other country. ByteDance, Alibaba, JD.com and others will be huge winners in the New China capitalism with state intervention.