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NYSE:BABA
This is sort of the Amazon (AMZN-Q) of China. A stock she owns in her aggressive account, but you need to take time to really learn the structure and understand what it is you are owning. This is an online retailer, both business and individual. Just as we have seen strength in Amazon, it has some very good trends. The one concern is what the consumer trends are in China. Currently there is a little bit of slowing, but she thinks that will pick up again. There is also some concern as to whether there are going to be any differences in US trade policies that will affect the company and its ability to be a global competitor to Amazon.
Has spent a lot of time over the last couple of years focusing on e-commerce. When this company went public, there was a lot of love/hate with a lot of people questioning if they could deliver on the growth people expected. It has done a better than expected job in doing that, not just the one e-Commerce business but a marketplace business, with much higher margin than people expected. His challenge is that property rights in China are not as strong as they are in North America, so you actually have a very creative structure that owns the entity, Alibaba, you are not actually a direct investor in the business. Going forward it is going to be a lot more challenging given the size of the business. As margins have compressed, he doesn’t feel he is being compensated through the valuation today.
Short Sell? He applauds your aggressiveness. He would like to Short it as he thinks it is a house of cards. In China there is an ability to keep companies sustaining at a higher level longer than what they otherwise would. From what he has seen on their accounting, he doesn’t know that there are real earnings being generated on a real cash flow. He wouldn’t own this.
Not a bad investment. They will surpass Wal-Mart (WMT-N) in Gross Mercantile Value within the next few months, and will probably be double by 2020. You have to keep in mind that of China’s total retail sales, only 10% is done online right now. US has 15% and growing, meaning that there is still a fair amount of headroom for growth. China has adopted online to offline faster than anywhere else globally, and this company will be exposed to that.