Opinión de Third Point Capital:
Alibaba & JD.com
During the quarter, we took advantage of jitters about China’s relationships with Hong Kong
and the U.S. that created an air pocket in trading of Chinese‐related shares to establish new
positions in e‐commerce leaders Alibaba and JD.com. As we have articulated in prior letters3,
our outlook for Alibaba and the broader Chinese e‐commerce market is bright. We believe
online gross merchandise value (“GMV”) will grow at a mid‐teens CAGR over the next five
years, propelled by both (1) rising consumption per capita, as the Chinese retail market is
equal in size to the U.S. despite four times as many consumers, and (2)increased penetration
of retail by online, a trend which we believe has been structurally accelerated by the COVID‐
19 pandemic.
As the e‐commerce market matures, we believe Alibaba & JD will leverage scale and growing
repositories of transaction data to increase monetization of their platforms through targeted
advertising to improve revenue yields (revenues as a percentage of GMV) from a starting
point of less than 4% today. As a point of comparison, brick‐and‐mortar retail store rent
expenses in China are greater than 10% of sales on average, which provides a significant
umbrella for online marketplaces to take a greater share of GMV through a combination of
commission and advertising spending as online retailer cost structures converge with brick‐
and‐mortar retail.
Finally, we continue to be excited about the latent potential in some of Alibaba’s businesses
beyond the core e‐commerce marketplaces – particularly the cloud computing business,
Aliyun. China’s cloud computing industry remains nascent but is growing nearly 3x faster
than its developed market counterparts through a combination of rising IT intensity, rapid
cloud penetration, and a gradual moderation in software piracy. Within that market, Aliyun
is increasingly dominant (with nearly 50% market share) and will generate dramatic profit
growth as margins expand with scale. As one reference point, Aliyun today resembles
Amazon’s AWS business five years ago; this is an encouraging comparison given that today,
AWS’ operating profits (and estimated enterprise value) exceed Alibaba’s business in its
entirety. Ant Financial – in which Alibaba holds a ~30% stake that is worth roughly $70
billion – has announced its intention to go public later this year. Alibaba shares will benefit
further should they become accessible to mainland Chinese investors through inclusion in
the Southbound Connect.