This article is from WeChat public account: China-Venture , author: Chen Ching Cheung, from the title figure: vision China
On November 26, Alibaba was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The opening price was reported at HK $ 187, an increase of 6.25% from the offer price of HK $ 176, with a total market value of approximately HK $ 4 trillion, surpassing Tencent Holdings’ HK $ 3.26 trillion.
This is the third listing of Alibaba and the second listing on Hong Kong stocks. In November 2007, Alibaba’s B2B business was listed on the Hong Kong stock market, and then delisted in June 2012. In September 2014, the Alibaba Group was listed on the NYSE as a whole.
From 2007 to 2019, Alibaba re-landed in Hong Kong stock market. What new changes has it made? China Investment Network has sorted out Alibaba’s 12-year transformation from four aspects: business layout, performance data, investment mergers and acquisitions, and executive changes.
I. Business is expanding and the list of competitors is growing
Alibaba at the time of listing in 2007 (At the time, only the Alibaba B2B business of the group was listed) , it already has the embryonic form of the entire Alibaba Group .
At the end of the year before the listing, Alibaba used three months to separate its five business units into five subsidiaries, namely Alibaba, Taobao, Alibaba Software, and B2B. Alipay and China’s Yahoo were dubbed “Five Fingers of Dharma.”
At that time, the B2B business was the elder brother, the cash cow of the entire Alibaba Group, responsible for “blood transfusion” for Taobao, Ali Software, Alipay and China’s Yahoo business units.
Taobao just won the C2C battlefield-its rival eBay announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market at the end of 2006. Internet observer Keso commented, “This is a competition between a company that targets market size and a company that targets revenue growth. EBay ( Note from China Investment Network: eBay acquired eBay in 2003) The existing stock market is almost meaningless compared with the huge incremental market that entered the outbreak period.
To a certain extent, Taobao ’s victory over eBay was also one of the beginnings of Chinese Internet companies’ first market and then talking about making money.
Taobao, which beat eBay, has few competitors. It is only worth mentioning that Tenpai’s Paipai.com has been promoted with the help of QQ pop-ups and has become the e-commerce platform behind Taobao in the C2C field. However, its market share is almost negligible. The iResearch report shows that in China’s C2C e-commerce market in 2007, the share of Taobao transactions reached 83.6%. In the end, Tencent took a stake in Jingdong, and Paipai entered the Jingdong system.
However, Ali, who has no rivals, has not stopped expanding its business.
In 2006, the market share of B2C was gradually expanding. Due to concerns that rivals would start with B2C business and cannibalize Taobao’s C2C business, Jack Ma began to try B2C business. This was the beginning of Tmall’s birth. In April 2008, Taobao officially launched Taobao Mall’s (later Tmall) to enter the B2C industry.
So far, the two most important business pillars of Ali’s retail business have been born.
Today, Alibaba’s Taobao has evolved into a retail business ecosystem. Including Chinese business Taobao, Tmall, Hema Fresh Health Shipshippo, Intime Department Store, Alibaba Health, cross-border and global business AliExpress ASix years later, Alibaba was able to make a net profit of 87.9 billion yuan a year. Alibaba’s financial report shows that in fiscal 2019, Alibaba’s net profit was 87.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.12%.
Alibaba’s performance changes can be viewed in two parts. One is the data of the B2B business’s listing on the Hong Kong stock market from 2007 to 2011, and the other is the data of the Alibaba Group’s US stock market in 2014.
In 2011, Alibaba’s B2B business paid members decreased from 809,000 last year to 765,000, and Alibaba’s B2B business began to decline. In June 2012, Alibaba B2B company delisted from the Hong Kong stock market. And in the prospectus disclosed when Alibaba went public in 2014, there was almost no mention of B2B business.
After the delisting of Hong Kong stocks and the listing of US stocks, Alibaba’s growth engine and cash cows have gradually changed from B2B companies to e-commerce businesses including Taobao and Tmall.
Alibaba’s users have grown rapidly after its listing on the US stock market. In March 2019, Alibaba’s annual active consumers increased to 654 million, which has more than tripled in five years. According to the prospectus disclosed by Alibaba’s recent Hong Kong stock market listing, as of June 2019, annual active consumers reached 730 million, and if Ant Financial was added, the number of users after deduplication was as high as 960 million.
In terms of revenue, as of March 2019, Alibaba’s revenue was 378.1 billion yuan, nearly 19 times that of 2012; profit was 87.9 billion yuan, 20 times that of 2012.