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Alibaba breaks itself up in six

economist.com

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Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#311

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

cstrat wrote: post #277
eloff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the reason the stock jumped on the news is the company is potentially worth more this way, by breaking out higher margin / faster growth units from the big retail business. A lot of Amazon investors would love to see the same with AWS. It sounds silly since nothing really changes, but it has to do with the way investors calculate the value of public companies.

Yeah I saw this happen with a business I was involved with. Split up each business could be valued with direct competition in market and the same PE ratios applied to evaluate value and market cap. It caused a noticeable jump in overall stock value while nothing actually changed other than how businesses reported to the market.

Does this mean it was undervalued beforehand? Are companies in the “before” scenario generally undervalued?

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#312

Post by bufferoverflow »

toyg wrote: post #119
bufferoverflow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of them will own apple.com? Which of them will own Apple trademark? Which of them will own Apple logo?

Trivialities that antitrust regulations already cover. It would not be the first time a company has been broken up.

You didn't answer the question.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#314

Post by toyg »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #312
toyg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivialities that antitrust regulations already cover. It would not be the first time a company has been broken up.

You didn't answer the question.

I don't have to: I'm not a judge specialized in antitrust law and I don't have access to Apple's books to determine what would be more appropriate.

But a judge can, and will (if asked to), because - as I said - it's hardly an unprecedented situation. Just to mention one, AT&T still exists as a brand but was once broken up.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#315

Post by gordian-mind »

munificent wrote: post #308
gordian-mind wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a company that successfully puts rockets into space that he happens to be CEO of. What an hilarious amount of bad faith! What drives you to resent him that much? Envy? It's okay: he's achieved a lot, but maybe you can too if you work at it.

I think Musk is a bad person, but I don't carry any particular resentment or anger towards him. However, I think it's an unhelpful mindset for others to believe that Musk is some sort of model for entrepreneurial success.

> I think Musk is a bad person, but I don't carry any particular resentment or anger towards him.

Then maybe you should scrutinize who you get your information from: intelligent people who have worked with Musk, or random journalists and forumers that repeat talking points such as "this immense success over several decades of active executive role is just pure luck".

> However, I think it's an unhelpful mindset for others to believe that Musk is some sort of model for entrepreneurial success.

What an interesting thing to think! The person with arguably the greatest track record of entrepeneurial success alive should, under no occasion, be taken as some sort of model for entrepreneurial success. If you have contenders for this position, I'm interested.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#316

Post by gordian-mind »

kranke155 wrote: post #306
gordian-mind wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about laying off 75% of its workforce and open sourcing the twitter algorithm?

Is the company more valuable ?

Well it increases revenue, so certainly. The open sourcing increases its ethicality; I guess you could say it's not direct value.

In terms of pure market cap, which I'm not sure how relevant it is, it seems that the current valuation (41 billion) is higher than when he offered to buy it (34 billion in April 2022).

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#317

Post by kranke155 »

gordian-mind wrote: post #316
kranke155 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the company more valuable ?

Well it increases revenue, so certainly. The open sourcing increases its ethicality; I guess you could say it's not direct value. In terms of pure market cap, which I'm not sure how relevant it is, it seems that the current valuation (41 billion) is higher than when he offered to buy it (34 billion in April 2022).

I'd love to see a user count. My impression is a few people left, but I'm not sure.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#318

Post by s1artibartfast »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #307
s1artibartfast wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is my exact point. I don't think it is reasonable to assume he wasn't aware that it was a risk. It takes a special kind of arrogance to conclude that people are idiots simply because you don't understand their actions after a moment of thought and with no information. Doubly so when you have someone who grew up through the cultural revolution, lived in China for 60 years, and is a Communist Party member.

Ma is no idiot, and he knows how the system works or Alibaba would never have become a titan, but I think when you get to a certain level of power / money I it warps your perception of what's risky and you overestimate how much you can get away with because of your own sense of invincibility. Musk is a pretty good example of this. So yeah, I would retract what I said about him being clueless, more like careless and o…

When it comes to Ma or Musk, I think it easy to backseat, and project how we would have acted to get the outcome we would want. This ignores the reality that we don't actually know what their motivations and priorities are.

The relevant question is if Ma was actually surprised with the smackdown, or realized it was a possible/likely outcome, and chose to proceed anyways. You seem to think Ma made a mistake, maybe so, but maybe he would make the same choice again given the same chances.

Both Ma and Musk have FU money. They have both made choices that cost them money, but we can only guess at if they actually see their choices as mistakes. They are both still multi-billionaires, so their mistakes haven't been bad enough to cost them their lives or fortunes.

If you had 20 or 200B in the bank, would you let financial risks govern every decision you make? What price tag would you put on speaking your mind or living the life you want to live? How many billion would you gamble on a long shot? Being insanely wealthy probably makes people overconfident, but it absolutely makes some people more willing to take financial risks.

Im not saying Musk or Ma are right all the time, but I don't think it is right to judge everything through a financial lens, with hindsight, and no insider information on motivation. I think that anyone who pretends to know what Ma was thinking is overestimating their knowledge and ability.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#319

Post by webmaven »

not2b wrote: post #271
HWR_14 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missing option (3). Jack Ma, prominent billionaire, was surrounded by kiss-asses for the past 5-10 years. In doing so, he developed a distorted sense of his own intelligence/power/allies which caused him to make a calculation about the current state of Chinese politics and power that is obviously false to an outside observer. See also, Twitter is was not worth $44 billion in 2022. Missing option (4). If you have bill…

Except that Musk's Twitter in no way supports freedom of speech. For a while he banned any mention of Mastodon, or the ElonJet account, and he's banned a whole slew of antifascist accounts and journalists who report on the far right (he will claim that it's because they violated rules, but in each case it seems it was a new rule: journalism he doesn't like is "doxxing": reporting on who did what). So sure, it looks l…

> Except that Musk's Twitter in no way supports freedom of speech.

It seems to be supporting Musk's freedom of speech just fine.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#320

Post by ksec »

duxup wrote: post #6

It’s always hard for me to understand the why when it comes to China’s government. “Investors cheer the move as signalling the end of China’s tech crackdown” If this is government action then why would this be the “end” of government involvement?

I think this is the wrong question, it is not " when it comes to China’s government.".

It is the investor you should be questioning. And if you are cynical, ( Comparatively speaking, in US terms ), Wall Street will use anything as an excuses to get the results they want.

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