China?s largest e-commerce Alibaba Group (BABA) will announce its fourth-quarter earnings next Thursday.
The December quarter?s sales are usually very strong for Alibaba, because of large promotional events such as the annual Single?s Day sale on November 11. Wall Street analysts now expect revenue at Alibaba to rise by 47.3% from a year ago to 27.6 billion yuan.
But we are not likely to see operating leverage from Alibaba yet. Analysts expect earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, to rise by only 24% (almost halving the revenue growth) to 14 billion yuan. The EBITDA margin is expected to be just over 50%, down from 60% a year ago.
This is mostly due to a rise in operating expenses,?owing to investments and consolidation of new businesses (e.g., UC Web, AutoNavi), as well as likely greater marketing expenditure for the promotional events during the quarter,? noted Morgan Stanley?s Angela Moh and team. Alibaba and Tencent (0700.HK/TCEHY) spent more than $8 billion last year buying strikingly similar companies in their bid to be China?s top Internet company, Reuters reported.
The buying spree has not ended. Just yesterday, Alibaba said it would invest in Israeli start-up Visualead, which makes animated QR codes. QR codes are very popular in China. On Tencent?s WeChat for instance, you can become friends with someone by scanning each other?s QR codes. You can also scan in coupons using the QR code on your WeChat app. This is another buy to battle with Tencent. Also, last week, Alibaba ventured into India by investing $575 million in online payment services provider One97 Communications. As a result, we are likely to see Alibaba?s margin suppressed for a while as the giant e-commerce integrates one buy after another.
Shares of Alibaba have fallen over 15% in the last two months. We may see some ?near-term overhang,? warned the Morgan Stanley analysts, who has a Buy rating and $118.10 price target, because a large chunk of locked-up shares, or 17% of Alibaba?s total shares outstanding, will be available for sale in the public market on March 18. blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2015/01/21/alibaba-q4-margin-likely-weak-ipo-lock-up-expires-in-march/?
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