Alibaba's new paradigm is issuing shares, which makes the stock unattractive unless it falls by half from here. The latest example is an HK$80B ($10.2B) share placement to fund its full-stack AI capabilities. x.com
Michael Burry
Author of Cassandra Unchained, Former Hedge Fund Manager at Scion Asset Management
Alibaba's $10.2 billion sale of new stock to fund AI dilutes existing holders, shrinking each shareholder's slice. It helps the AI push but is not great for holders today. x.com
Alibaba is not a cheap Amazon, and cheap can stay cheap for a long time. It trades at 2015 prices, while since 2015 Amazon has gone from $34 to $250, Alphabet from $39 to $344 and QQQ from $100 to about $770, eleven years of missed compounding. Chinese companies should not be assumed to follow the playbook of American tech giants, just as Tencent is not Alphabet and BYD is not Tesla. x.com
Alibaba's offering looks leaked and already priced in, and Friday's options activity points much higher. Big money dumped the stock Friday because of the leak, so at worst it retests its China low before moving up, and the stock is already way too cheap. x.com x.com
Alibaba is no longer worth owning when better opportunities exist. The case for it as a China hedge was a macro feeling applied to a single company, and it ignored Jack Ma being yanked away and a lack of cloud growth while leaning on share buybacks and looking too cheap to ignore. Despite its discount to US companies, other stocks, such as GitLab and Airbnb, now look much more compelling. x.com
Chinese stocks remain a value trap because cheap valuations don't matter if shareholders keep getting diluted. Per Bloomberg, Alibaba plans to raise about $10.2 billion by selling 710 million shares at HK$112.7 each, a 3.6% discount to Friday's ADR close. x.com
Alibaba is a contrarian trade because accelerating demand for relatively cheaper compute is very underappreciated, and China's cloud market is still in its infancy versus the US. Alibaba is a consensus short as upside from closed-source AI looks illusory. x.com x.com
Alibaba's bull case ignores e-commerce margins being cut in half. A post the author replies to argues the stock is cheap at about 15x forward earnings, with cloud growth accelerating to 36% and management targeting $100 billion in annual cloud and AI revenue. x.com
Alibaba's HK$80 billion share placement, the largest in Hong Kong history, dilutes shareholders to fund AI just as the market rewards free cash flow and buybacks. Q2 free cash flow was -44.7 billion with capex of 67.7 billion, and the food-delivery war burned 80-100 billion, about what the placement raises. Selling shares after buying back at ~$97/ADS recasts a value stock as a growth bet. The deal was oversubscribed at a modest discount; the test is whether per-share free cash flow rises. x.com … Show more
Alibaba should be taken seriously within the next three months, trading at just 10 times 2028 earnings. x.com x.com
Alibaba is not worth owning while China is cashing in on the war, because a similar P/E to Microsoft does not mean similar risk. x.com