Once Unstoppable, Alibaba Is Now Faltering

livemint.com:

SINGAPORE—Chinese internet titan Alibaba Group Holding once seemed invincible. Now, it is stuck in a slump. The e-commerce giant was a major driver of China’s growing consumer economy as it pioneered online shopping in China.

Over the years, it also expanded into cloud computing, physical supermarkets and digital entertainment. Now, its grip on online retail is weakening. In recent months, the company lost a long-running chief executive, while a restructuring plan to revive Alibaba has quickly hit roadblocks.

That came after Alibaba and Jack Ma, its co-founder, were slammed by Beijing’s sweeping regulatory crackdown that started three years ago. After an explosive stock rise following its 2014 initial public offering, Alibaba shares lost most of those gains, now trading near its IPO price. Last week, Alibaba slipped from its long-held market capitalization perch as China’s most valuable online retail company, losing the title to PDD Holdings, which runs e-commerce platforms Temu and Pinduoduo.

“Prior to 2020, China was a market that global investors could not afford to ignore, and Alibaba was the first stock to buy to gain exposure to China," said Vey-Sern Ling, a senior equity adviser at Union Bancaire Privée. That is no longer the case, Ling said. Many of Alibaba’s woes, such as China halting the IPO of its financial technology affiliate Ant Group in 2020, are related to the government’s effort to rein in the tech sector and its widely known leaders.

But Alibaba has had its own challenges specific to its business. The company hadn’t kept pace with fickle Chinese consumers, who began shifting purchases to social-media platforms and reining in spending as the economy weakened over the past three years. Alibaba is trying