Alibaba

[CityFarmer]

More than $6 billion sales in a day. This is the power of Alibaba...

Alibaba Singles' Day sales hit new record; surge past $6 billion

HANGZHOU - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said more than $6 billion of goods have been sold so far during its annual Singles' Day online shopping frenzy, as customers jumped on heavily discounted goods to send sales surging past 2013's record high.

More than 39 billion yuan ($6.4 billion) worth of goods was sold on the e-commerce giant's websites 15 hours into the event on Tuesday, with another nine to go.
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http://www.todayonline.com/business/merc...ng-bonanza

[holy grail]

Up again today. This BABA is going through the roof. I think it is already among one of the top 10 companies listing in US in terms of valuation? Obvious all those who bought already has not buy enough, and all those who had not bought are forced to buy it since this is the only investible tech company in china with scale and a unique business model, and it becomes like a vicious cycle...

I have friends in China who told me the taobao sale is so hot in China that a lot of their friends were all waking up midnight refreshing their browser to shop for the single days limited sales.

[Wildreamz]

I have friends in China who told me the taobao sale is so hot in China that a lot of their friends were all waking up midnight refreshing their browser to shop for the single days limited sales.

We have people in Singapore doing that.

[greengiraffe]

China's richest man Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, says being so wealthy is a great pain
Asia | Updated yesterday at 09:54 PM

SHANGHAI (AFP) - He may now be China's richest man, but Mr Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has admitted in a United States television interview that being so wealthy is actually causing him "great pain".

Mr Ma has seen his fortune balloon to US$19.5 billion (S$25.2 billion) after Alibaba's record-breaking US$25 billion initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in September, according to data compiled by Forbes magazine.

On Tuesday, the company chalked up a new record - US$9.3 billion of sales conducted through its platforms during Singles Day, its 24-hour shopping promotion and the world's biggest online retail event. But a successful stock listing and vast fortunes have caused him stress, Mr Ma said in an interview with US business news channel CNBC Tuesday. "This month I'm not very happy - I think too much pressure," he told the broadcaster. "Maybe the stock goes so up, maybe people have high expectations on you, maybe I think too much about the future and have too many things to worry about," he said.

Mr Ma said that people often tell him that being rich "is good" but admitted he found being the wealthiest man in China difficult. "Yeah, it is good, but not the richest man in China. It's a great pain because when you're (the) richest person in the world, everybody (is) surrounding you for money," he told CNBC. He added that people now looked at him differently when he walked down the street and added: "Spending money is much more difficult than making money."

Alibaba's share price has been on a steady uptrend since it debuted in New York two months ago. It closed at US$114.54 on Tuesday, representing a nearly 70 per cent gain from its offer price of US$68.

His remarks echoed what he told state media in early October when he said being named China's richest man is "meaningless".

"My happiest days were when I used to earn 90 yuan (S$19) a month," Mr Ma once told state media.

He is looking at the possibility to establish a foundation to spend money "in a business way" and may even compete with United States billionaire Bill Gates in the field of philanthropy, according to CNBC.

Mr Ma was ranked as China's most generous person after he donated a 1.4 per cent stake in his firm to set up a charity focused on the environment, health care and education, according to a survey by wealth publisher Hurun in late October.

[greengiraffe]

Chinese customers find buying stuff online easy - but delivery is another story

Workers collecting items for customers' orders at a warehouse owned by e-commerce giant JD.com in Beijing last week. PHOTO: NYT
13 Nov5:50 AM
Hangzhou, China

IT was the biggest shopping day of the year in China, and the discounts were steep. But Jiang Shan waited to buy some of what she wanted.

On Tuesday, tens of millions of Chinese like Jiang bought more than US$9 billion worth of products online on Singles' Day, China's de facto e-commerce holiday and the world's largest Internet shopping event. But buying was one thing; delivery is another.

Ms Jiang, who owns a bakery in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, spent 2,000 yuan (S420) on a water purifier and kitchen supplies and would have spent even more, she said, were she confident the products she ordered would get to her quickly and undamaged.

"I tend not to buy things on Singles' Day because the logistics just worry me too much," she said. "If I get the stuff I ordered this year in 10-15 days, I'll be happy."

China has caught the e-commerce bug. An underdeveloped retail sector and a flourishing network of online merchants offering huge selections at low prices have led the Chinese to look to the Web first to buy everything from shoes and ovens to toilet paper and toothbrushes.

The Chinese e-commerce market is already bigger than that of the United States and, by 2020, is projected to be the size of the US, British, German, Japanese and French markets combined, according to a KPMG report.

But the country struggles with delivery, largely because of decades of underinvestment in inland logistics infrastructure and inefficient local regulation. Goods are slow to arrive in the country's interior, and damage is a persistent problem - affecting both consumers and small businesses.

"Imagine having 30 NBA teams but only a few high school gyms to play in - that was China's logistics infrastructure when e-commerce took off," said Shen Haoyu, chief executive of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com's business-to-consumer website.

Deliveries within China are so inefficient that the country spent 18 per cent of its gross domestic product on logistics in 2013 - 6.5 per cent more than the global average and 9.5 per cent above what is spent in developed countries like the US, said Fox Chu, director of Asia Pacific infrastructure and transportation at consulting firm Accenture.

"Shipping goods from Fujian to Beijing can be more expensive than shipping something from Beijing to California," he said, referring to the roughly 1,900 km trip from the southern Chinese province to the country's capital.

Recently, both Alibaba, China's main e-commerce company, and JD.com, its smaller rival, have tried to make things more efficient, especially inland.

Alibaba has pledged to invest 100 billion yuan in an initiative to link third-party companies that deliver its shipments. The idea is to form an alliance that uses Alibaba's consumer and shipment data to better anticipate orders and make delivery more efficient.

JD.com, on the other hand, is building its own warehouses and shipping its own goods. The company can manage same-day deliveries in 100 cities and next-day deliveries in 600 others, said Mr Shen, the JD.com executive.

As with most things in China, the state of logistics can be broken down by geography and wealth. In the largest and most affluent cities on the country's eastern coast, just about anything can be delivered within a day.

Zhang Rui, an IT salesman who lives in Beijing, no longer buys small daily necessities at stores. "Just about anything I need at home I buy online - whether it's groceries, toilet paper, rice, cooking oil, salt, a toothbrush or shampoo," he said.

For Ms Jiang, living inland, it's another story. She recalled when a courier refused to help her carry a heavy parcel up the stairs to her apartment. Some couriers would not wait for her to open the package to ensure the goods she ordered were all there and undamaged. Her friends who live on the east coast and use Alibaba question how she survives.

"When the package comes, I don't expect it to be pretty," she said. Even if products have a few scratches, "I don't care anymore". Safety has also become an issue. In late 2013, one person was killed and seven were hospitalised after a toxic liquid sent by a chemical company leaked onto other parcels being delivered. In 2012 a China Southern Airlines plane caught fire when weatherproof matches inside a parcel ignited.

China's delivery problems are highlighted on Singles' Day, which was conceived as a way for the unmarried of China to shop away their loneliness. Beginning Tuesday night, items from the 278.5 million orders placed on Singles' Day at Alibaba's e-commerce sites were to be shipped, largely by truck, across a land mass the size of the US and crisscrossed by dizzying mountain ranges.

The trucks were to shuttle the packages from warehouses to smaller distribution centres, drivers paying costly tolls and running into traffic jams along the way. After goods are dropped off, many vehicles will not bring packages back because of convoluted local regulations.

From the distribution centres, equipped only with shelving to hold the deluge of packages, hundreds of thousands of deliverymen will begin the slow process of taking each parcel to recipients spread out across distant Himalayan hamlets, eastern Chinese megacities and jungle towns on the South China Sea. NYT

[CityFarmer]

The core part of Alibaba dream, the rests are to support the dream...

Alibaba to launch international version of Taobao marketplace

WUZHEN China - Jack Ma, the founder of China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , said on Thursday the firm will set up an international version of its e-commerce marketplace Taobao to serve shoppers worldwide in multiple languages, including English and Chinese.

Alibaba currently has an international e-commerce platform specializing in wholesale goods called Aliexpress, but does not have a similar offering for consumers to sell to each other.

Ma made the comments on the sidelines of a meeting in China's eastern city of Hangzhou between China's Premier Li Keqiang and Chinese and foreign Internet industry leaders. The meeting coincided with the World Internet Conference, being held over three days in the town of Wuzhen.

(Corrects description of Aliexpress) REUTERS
http://www.todayonline.com/business/ma-s...arketplace

[CityFarmer]

First capital raising post-IPO. Alibaba will pay the capital cost of non-Chinese company...

Alibaba sells US$8 billion of bonds in company’s debut sale

NEW YORK (Nov 21): Alibaba Group Holding sold US$8 billion of bonds in its debut sale at yields that were lower than originally offered after the Chinese e-commerce company got at least US$57 billion of orders from investors.

“The premium we see associated with Chinese companies is absent in this case,” Dorian Garay, a New York-based money manager for the global investment-grade debt fund at ING Investment Management, said in a telephone interview.

“It feels like new-issue concession is non-existent.”

Alibaba’s debt offering adds to a banner year for corporate bonds with worldwide issuance of US$3.8 trillion on pace to exceed US$4 trillion for the first time.

The Hangzhou, China-based company, which raised a record US$25 billion in an initial public offering in September, will use proceeds to refinance some credit agreements, according to a Nov 13 statement.

The banks underwriting the biggest dollar-denominated notes by an Asian company lowered the premium by as much as 0.27 percentage point on its longest-dated bond, according to a person with knowledge of the offering, who asked not to be identified because the details are private.

Alibaba sold the largest portions in equal US$2.25 billion offers of five- and 10-year notes, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The 2.5 percent, five-year notes sold at a yield of 95 basis points above similar-maturity Treasuries and the 3.6 percent, 10-year securities sold at a relative yield of 128 basis points, the data show.
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http://www.theedgemarkets.com/sg/article...debut-sale

[CityFarmer]

One more major player in smartphone market, an overcrowded market...

Alibaba eyes its own OS to run China smartphones

BEIJING — Alibaba Group Holding wants its mobile operating system to run millions of smartphones in China. The fastest solution: Spend some of its cash hoard on a handset maker.

Vice-chairman Joseph Tsai said last month that Alibaba’s homegrown system, YunOS, can knit services together for the company as Asia’s largest e-commerce giant steps beyond clothes and gadgets to entertainment and healthcare. With a market value of US$266 billion (S$351 billion), Alibaba has struggled to push YunOS in China, where more than nine out of 10 mobile devices use Google’s Android.

Alibaba could pursue a possible stake in Xiaomi, China’s largest smartphone seller. Or it could invest in Hong Kong-listed Coolpad Group to guarantee that YunOS is installed on the factory floor. Another option is to target one of the dozens of smaller, closely held manufacturers in China, said research firm Canalys.
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http://www.todayonline.com/tech/alibaba-...martphones

[CityFarmer]

Alibaba is highly customized to China consumers. The initial step sound logical, retailers should be most adaptable. Amazon should not be affected too much, at least for the time being...

Alibaba in major initiative to court China consumer for U.S. retailers

SAN FRANCISCO/BEIJING/SHANGHAI - China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd plans a major move to win U.S. business this year, by offering American retailers new ways to sell to China's vast and growing middle class.

Anchored by Alipay, the dominant Chinese electronic payments system that works closely with Alibaba and is controlled by its executives, the world's largest Internet retailer is using the calling card of China's consumers to attract U.S. partners, two sources close to the company told Reuters.

Long seen as the most potent threat to Amazon.com Inc with $300 billion in global sales, the moves add up to a conservative approach to expanding in the United States, contrary to industry speculation that the company may be plotting a direct assault on U.S. soil.

That considered strategy, outlined to Reuters for the first time by the sources and executives who work directly with the Chinese company, is intended to heighten awareness in the United States of what Alibaba does, gain goodwill in an important Western market, and lay the groundwork for a longer-term play.

At the heart of its push are Alibaba's and Alipay's trial deals to handle Chinese sales, payment and shipping for some of the biggest names in U.S. retail from Neiman Marcus Group to Saks Inc. Both confirmed the agreement but would not talk about how the pilots are faring.

The Chinese companies will also work with U.S. startup Shoprunner, an online mall for U.S. retailers in which it owns a stake, and retail services provider Borderfree Inc to court Chinese consumers.

And Alibaba is preparing a marketing campaign to raise awareness among U.S. businesses of its global business-to-business wholesale platform, Alibaba.com, so they can buy and sell to and from global suppliers.

"They own the toll road into China," said Michael DeSimone, Chief Executive Officer of Borderfree. "What really puts the jetpack on things when you deal with an Alipay is, they're on the ground and they know the Chinese consumer so well."
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http://www.todayonline.com/business/alib...-retailers

[CityFarmer]

IMO, it is an very important edge for private-lender. One blocking issue for big-four banks to lend to SMEs, is reliable credit rating. The credit rating info is very valuable...

Alibaba finance arm sets up China consumer credit-scoring system

SHANGHAI - - The financial services affiliate of Alibaba launched on Wednesday a system that will use the e-commerce giant's data trove to assess the creditworthiness of Chinese consumers and businesses with little or no history at traditional lenders.

The credit-scoring system, Sesame Credit, will mine user data as well as payment histories from Alibaba Group Holding's various platforms, Ant Financial Services Group in a statement.

Chief Data Scientist Yu Wujie said the system would take into consideration, among several factors, whether consumers are active Internet users, have a stable residential address and have been using the same mobile phone number for a long time.

Set up in 2014, Ant Financial has been growing rapidly, largely through targeting smaller businesses and hundreds of millions of consumers who are often underserved by China's larger banks. Its services include payment processing, personal banking, wealth management, small business loans, personal credit and insurance.

Parent Alibaba has been using its dominant market position in e-commerce to push into the financial services market. The firm's efforts include a money market fund for consumers, a mobile payment app and a private bank.

In November, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma said Ant Financial, which is not part of the New York-listed company, will definitely seek a separate listing for the e-commerce company's crown jewel, ideally on a domestic stock market. REUTERS
http://www.todayonline.com/business/alib...ing-system