How Big Will Alibaba Group Become?
Meet Alibaba Group. It's soon to become bigger than either Tencent or Baidu. The biggest Chinese Internet company in the world.
Read the full post in Forbes
Showing posts with label Tencent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tencent. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Alibaba Group will IPO as a Whole - Not as Parts
When it IPOs, expect one Alibaba Group IPO - not several parts IPOs.
Read the full Forbes post
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The Most Likely Buyers for Yahoo!
Which folks are likeliest to buy Yahoo! and at what premium?
Read the full Forbes Post.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Time for Yahoo!’s Board to Play Offense: Sell 10% of Its Alibaba Stake Now
There is too much misinformation and conservatism circulating about the value of Yahoo!'s stake in Alibaba Group. It's time for Yahoo!'s board to set the record straight by selling a 10% piece of its stake.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Future of Chinese E-Commerce
By Eric Jackson 
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Last month, I met about a dozen Chinese tech companies to get a better sense of the businesses and industry trends in China that affect e-commerce companies.
All but one of the companies I met with are public. The only private company was called Letao, and it sells shoes in China. Because of that, it's often called by Americans "the Zappos of China." However, there are important differences.
Letao does all its sales entirely on consignment. Also, because it makes more money on private label sales than reselling premium brands, Letao has been putting a big emphasis on its own white label shoes recently. It started as an ecommerce toy company but switched to shoes last year when it believed the market opportunity there was bigger.
Letao also has some big American backers behind it, including Tiger Global. Although there are no plans for an immediate IPO, that is certainly in the cards for Letao at some point.
Here's an edited version of my conversation with Eric Chai, the assistant to the CEO at Letao.
Eric: Tell us about your CEO.
Chai: Letao's CEO, Mr. Bi, used to be the assistant to Robin Li in Baidu(BIDU_).
Eric: And how many employees do you have?
Chai: We had 100 last year, but this year we have 500. The growth occurred after we made the transition from selling toys to shoes.
Eric: What do you think about all the group buying sites that are prevalent in China today?
Chai: I believe only two or three group buying sites can survive; we only collaborate with them so we can reach more people. Since the third quarter of 2009, we started cooperation with Groupon, Lashou and Nuomi. But since we have the customers now, we don't need to spend as much money to use those group buying sites anymore.
Eric: So how do you market yourself?
Chai: We have a very unique business model. We have some private brand names such as Angry Birds from Rovio, and these cheap products can attract many customers. We collaborated with Focus Media(FMCN_) before, but the commercial fees are high, so this is one of the reasons why we created the coupon strategy.
[Read the full post here at TheStreet.com]
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Why the “Winner Takes All” Strategy Doesn’t Always Work
Chinese Internet companies are going ga-ga pursuing "winner takes all" strategies. It will work for some, but not others.
Read the full post here at Forbes.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
In New Crop of Chinese IPOs, There’s Not Another Baidu
Don't expect to find the next Baidu in the upcoming crop of Chinese IPOs. However, there are many niche players that will still be very profitable and successful.
Read the full post here at Forbes
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Red-Hot Growth for Sina
By Eric Jackson But all that information, which is normally most important for investors, is really irrelevant for Sina -- and it has been so for at least the past six months. What investors this morning care most about is the growth in Weibo-registered users. Last night, Sina announced this number had recently surpassed 140 million, with 150,000 "verified" users (of which I'm proud to be one). These figures were all as of April, up from 100 million in late February, when the company last reported earnings. So this represents a gain of 40 million new users in two months. Previously, conventional wisdom was that Weibo growth came to 10 million a month. It's actually double that. CEO Charles Chao also reiterated that the company was continuing to invest a lot in engineering, headcount (censors) and marketing this year. This should ensure that Weibo holds on to a significant share of the social-networking market in China. Monetization still isn't top priority for Weibo. Still, Chao has hinted at a six possible business models being examined to generate user-based-derived revenue in the months and quarters ahead. In my view, Chao is doing exactly the right thing. Investors shouldn't be nervous about extra costs related to building out the internal infrastructure in support of more Weibo users. They also shouldn't worry about if revenue is lighter this year, even though sales have certainly grown in comparison with last year's numbers. [*** This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required. ***]
RealMoney Contributor
5/12/2011 12:15 PM EDT
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
Sina (SINA - commentary - Trade Now) reported its earnings last night, and news services accordingly showed their collective ability to cut and paste from the press release, letting you know that the company beat on revenue but came up a bit short on earnings per share. Sina also guided conservatively for the coming quarter on revenue, with the bottom end of the range dipping below analysts' current estimates.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Putting Taobao’s Size and Growth in Perspective
When you compare the size and growth of Taobao today, relative to Tencent and Baidu, the implied valuation of the private company (and Yahoo!) is staggering.
Read my full post on Forbes here.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Wall Street Journal China Opinion:中国科技股正面临泡沫危机吗？
My latest opinion piece from the WSJ China on why Chinese Internet stocks are still not in a bubble.
Read the whole post here.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
What Does Tencent Want With MySpace?
By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- There are new rumors out in the last week that Chinese Internet giant Tencent is talking to News Corp. (NWS_) about buying the once-hot social networking site MySpace.
[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]
Sphere: Related ContentMonday, March 28, 2011
Video: SINA Buyout Talk: China Watch
NEW YORK (TheStreet) - Contributor Eric Jackson details what makes Sina Corp an attractive buyout candidate.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Video: SINA is an Attractive Buyout Candidate
Contributor Eric Jackson says Sina's Weibo growth hasn't yet fully been reflected in its stock price given its potential. Tencent or Baidu (BIDU) would be interested buyers. And there's not a founder CEO to block a deal. Eric owns SINA and YHOO.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Hold the Groupon IPO
By Eric Jackson But the Groupon ad is far more damaging in the long run for that company, because it decided to trample over the China-Tibet issue and in the process send a damaging message to the Chinese government and Chinese users. If Groupon had left it at the two ads focusing on "saving the whales" by going on a whale-watching tour and "saving the rainforest" by going for a Brazilian bikini wax, there would have been the regular post-Super Bowl complaints that the ads were dumb, and that would have been the end of it. The Tibet ad tried to stick to the same sense of humor by contrasting the solemnity of a serious subject with the goofy idea of saving $15 off a fish curry at a Himalayan restaurant in Chicago. The problem -- besides choosing Tibet as a subject in the first place for a Super Bowl ad, knowing what a touchy subject it is with the Chinese government -- was in the solemn words Groupon chose: "The people of Tibet are in trouble, their very culture is in jeopardy." The words suggest that Groupon sides with the Tibetan people in their political struggle with China -- and that it is the Chinese who are placing the future of the Tibetan culture in jeopardy. [*** This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required. ***]
RealMoney Contributor
2/8/2011 7:30 AM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
No ad from last night's Super Bowl has drawn as much ire as Groupon's ad about Tibet. Even though the company ran three ads last night -- at a cost of $10 million -- that all showed a similar sense of humor, the Tibet ad has potentially thrown a wrench into its IPO plans. In short, that single off-the-cuff ad might have forever closed the entire Chinese market to Groupon. How could this happen?
We live in a Twitter world, where the immediate slight is seized upon and analyzed. Kenneth Cole (KCP - commentary - Trade Now) found that out last week when the company's founder tweeted out an attempt at irony, saying the masses in Egypt didn't need to riot for the new Kenneth Cole collection. It has turned into aPR nightmare for him. Will it affect the actual operating revenue of the company? Hard to say at this point, but it certainly seems to fly in the face of the firm's carefully crafted image as the brand of global concern.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Get Ready for China's Next Blockbuster IPO
By Eric Jackson With Dangdang (pronounced "Dong Dong"), the obvious comparison was Amazon (AMZN -commentary - Trade Now), hence it became the "Amazon of China." Of course, none of these comparisons are completely accurate. One difference is that the newly public Chinese companies face different competitive dynamics in China than their counterparts faced in the U.S. when they were at similar stages of development. There are also differences in the growth rates and potential market sizes. Regardless, investors clearly wanted in on the action. Other Chinese IPOs last week that weren't instantly compared to U.S. firms, including Bona Film Group(BONA - commentary - Trade Now) (BONA) and Ski-Mobi (MOBI - commentary - Trade Now) quickly saw their stocks fall (though I believe Bona has a great business). So what's the next big IPO we'll see out of China? Get ready for Renren, the new "Facebook/Groupon of China." Renren, a subsidiary of Beijing-based Oak Pacific Interactive, is China's leading social-networking services (SNS) provider. The company currently has 150 million registered users, 480 million page views a day and 4.1 billion user interactions per day. To put that into context, Facebook has 500 million active registered users, and its valuation as a private company has recently been estimated to be between $30 billion and $50 billion. Tencent has over 650 million users of its QQ instant messaging service (which is obviously a different type of social service than Facebook), and its market capitalization in Hong Kong is $41 billion (14% bigger than Baidu (BIDU -commentary - Trade Now).)
RealMoney Contributor
12/16/2010 5:30 PM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
If we've learned anything from the successful IPOs of Youku (YOKU - commentary - Trade Now) andDangdang (DANG - commentary - Trade Now) this month, it's that U.S. investors and media love referring to these Chinese companies in relation to their closest domestic equivalents.
Youku was constantly referred to as the "YouTube of China," though some smarter analysts said that it was closer to the "Hulu of China" because of its more professional, rather than user-generated, content. Even more astute analysts made said Youku could possibly become the "Netflix (NFLX - commentary - Trade Now) of China," based on Netflix's new streaming capabilities, which Youku might emulate.
Monday, November 08, 2010
The Biggest China Stock You Don't Know
By Eric Jackson
RealMoney Contributor
11/8/2010 5:04 PM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
RealMoney Contributor
11/8/2010 5:04 PM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson
Quick, what's the biggest Chinese Internet stock in the world today? If you said Baidu (BIDU - commentary- Trade Now), you're wrong. That's just the biggest U.S.-listed Chinese stock, at $38 billion in market capitalization.
No, the biggest Chinese Internet stock is Tencent Holdings, at over $40 billion in market capitalization. What is Tencent, you ask, and why have most U.S. investors never heard of it? The biggest reason is that the company is not listed here. It's listed on the Hong Kong exchange under the ticker 0700. Its shares also trade on the pink sheets in the U.S. under the ticker symbol TCEHY.
Sphere: Related Content
In the U.S., we only hear about the U.S.-listed Chinese internet stocks, such as the portals Sina(SINA - commentary - Trade Now) and Sohu(SOHU - commentary - Trade Now), or the bigger gaming stocks like Shanda (SNDA -commentary - Trade Now) or its gaming spinoff,Shanda Games (GAME - commentary - Trade Now). We're not nearly as plugged into what's going on in the rest of the space over there -- especially with the non-U.S. listed companies and the private companies.
On my recent trip to China, I was intrigued to read about the current battle between Tencent and Qihoo 360. This controversy is epic within China, and yet there has been next to no coverage here in the U.S. (with the exception of one Techcrunch article I spotted over the weekend). This is because Tencent is not listed here, and 360 is a private company.
It's a shame we haven't heard more about Tencent. It listed in Hong Kong in late 2005 for under HK$9. It recently touched an all-time high of HK$193 for a nice 2,000%-plus gain. (The stock is now down to HK$178.)
The crown jewel for Tencent is its QQ messaging platform. It started in 1999 and now has over 400 million users. The company makes most of its money from the services and ads it sells around the messaging. Most meaningfully, it makes significant money from online gaming (competing with the pioneer in the space, Shanda), but also from virtual goods and ads. It also has a search engine that it is likely to continue to improve, to provide Baidu with some more meaningful competition.
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