What is Alibaba?

Alibaba Group is a Chinese high-tech company specializing in online commerce. It owns the largest e-commerce sites such as Taobao, AliExpress, 1688, Alibaba, Tmall, and others. It also owns one of the largest and most widely used cloud computing services, Alibaba Cloud, as well as assets in entertainment and media.

In the late 1990s, China’s online commerce sector was in its infancy. Most of the local population didn’t even own a computer. But that didn’t stop the ambitious Jack Ma, whose story begins in a poor family in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, from deciding to venture into e-commerce. With his enthusiasm, he managed to inspire 17 people who were not afraid to invest their money in the idea of creating an online platform where customers from around the world could order goods in bulk from Chinese entrepreneurs.

Owners of Alibaba Group Corporation

Alibaba stock has been traded on the New York Stock Exchange since the fall of 2014, with a renewed listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December 2019.

The largest shareholders of BABA stock are:

1. SoftBank, a Japanese investment company, became one of the Group’s first investors in 1999 and currently owns 25.9% of BABA.
2. Joseph Tsai is a vice president and co-founder of Alibaba Group, owning 11.9% of Alibaba stock.
3. BlackRock is an international investment company that owns 3% of the securities of the Chinese high-tech group.
4. The corporation’s shareholders also include major investment funds such as Price T. Rowe Associates Inc. – 2.68%, The Vanguard Group Inc. – 1.89%, and Baillie Gifford & Co. – 1.86%.

Alibaba Group Products

The company derives about 87% of its profits from online trading platforms that operate as marketplaces:

1. Taobao is an online platform for selling a wide range of food and non-food items. Users of the portal do not pay any commission. Taobao generates revenue through advertising and internal services, such as raising merchant pages in search.
2. Tmall serves major global brands (Apple, Adidas, Gucci, etc.) that sell their goods to Chinese buyers. The site has no paid advertising; the portal is monetized by sellers paying for access to the trading floor, internal services, and commissions from transactions.
3. AliExpress is a well-known marketplace specializing in online trading. Sellers pay a one-time fixed fee of $1,500 to sell goods on AliExpress.
4. Lazada.com is a rapidly growing trading platform aimed at buyers from Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, etc.).
5. Alibaba Cloud is another major focus of the company, providing access to cloud services. Its intelligent cloud infrastructure offers data storage, analytics, computing power, cloud software, and more to users from various countries.

In 2020, Alibaba Group’s e-commerce platforms accounted for more than 55% of all online commerce in China and 15% of global turnover. In terms of market share, Alibaba Cloud ranks fourth in the world, behind giants such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

The current state of affairs at Alibaba and the future of Alibaba stock price

Alibaba Group is a fast-growing, high-tech company that is keeping pace with Amazon in terms of Jeff Bezos’ annual growth rate. Over the past five years, its revenues have grown by 48%. The corporation’s fiscal year ended on March 31, 2021, with revenues of 717.289 billion yuan ($109.48 billion), according to publicly available reports.

Alibaba Group companies today

The company has a low level of liabilities to assets, with approximately 74 billion in cash and bonds accumulated on its balance sheet. This means that Alibaba could buy SpaceX with all of its space projects right now if it wanted to. The group’s market capitalization has exceeded $600 billion.Also, on the Letizo site, you can find not only today’s BABA stock prices but also interesting news about big companies, including XOM stock, stock indices, cryptocurrencies, and more.