Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

In today's weather is good. Today's weather is good.

The rejuvenated alibaba is clearing obstacles blocking its path.

On October 25th local time in the USA, Alibaba announced that it has agreed to pay $0.4335 billion USD (approximately 3.089 billion RMB) to settle a class action lawsuit filed by investors in the USA.

Alibaba denied any allegations of wrongdoing, responsibility, misconduct, or harm in the announcement. "The purpose of the settlement we reached is to avoid the cost of further litigation and the disruptions caused."

This means that, in order to reduce the ongoing impact of long-term litigation on the capital markets, Alibaba has decided to "cut losses in time."

Starting from December 2020, the State Administration for Market Regulation legally initiated an investigation into Alibaba's alleged abuse of market dominance. On April 6, 2021, the Administration served Alibaba with an "Administrative Penalty Notice," ordering to cease illegal actions and imposing a fine of 18.228 billion RMB.

Based on this, some US investors have filed a class action lawsuit against Alibaba in the Southern District Court of New York in the USA, accusing it of engaging in monopolistic 'exclusive behavior'. The plaintiffs believe that due to Alibaba's false and misleading statements, the stock price of Alibaba was artificially inflated, ultimately causing economic losses to investors.

The plaintiff's attorneys stated in court documents that if the litigation continues, Alibaba's investors could potentially receive a maximum of $11.63 billion USD (approximately 82.899 billion RMB) in compensation. This makes this lawsuit one of the fifty largest securities class action settlements in the USA since the enactment of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) in 1995.

This is not Alibaba's first settlement. Back in 2019, Alibaba settled a US class action lawsuit for $0.25 billion USD. The plaintiffs alleged that Alibaba had concealed warnings from regulatory agencies about its counterfeiting capabilities before its 2014 listing.

In fact, class action lawsuits are not uncommon for Chinese concept stocks, including companies like JD.com, Baidu, PDD Holdings, which have all faced class action lawsuits from overseas shareholders. Fundamentally, class action lawsuits serve as a protective mechanism for investors, with most cases often ending in settlements.

For Alibaba, this is a 'high stock price' settlement. The settlement payment accounts for 3.7% of the compensation. Between 2021 and 2023, the average settlement payment for securities class actions was 1.8%, making Alibaba's compensation ratio double the industry average.

Behind the high compensation, Alibaba hopes to quickly extricate itself from this class action lawsuit, reduce the impact of litigation on the capital markets, and focus its efforts on business development.

Currently, Alibaba is facing an unprecedented market environment. In its core businesses, whether in e-commerce or cloud computing, they are in a fierce market competition. Alibaba's immediate priority is to address challenges from a business perspective.

In terms of e-commerce, with the rapid rise of new players like PDD Holdings and Douyin e-commerce, Alibaba's market share has been pushed below 50%. While it has initially stabilized its market share, how to improve monetization capabilities is a pressing challenge for Alibaba at present.

In terms of cloud business, alibaba is the company in the domestic internet industry that invests the most in AI, with layouts in models, cloud computing, and business scenarios, as well as investing in AI unicorns including Monopoly Dark, but at this stage, AI large models are still catching up in technology, alibaba still needs to continue burning money.

E-commerce represents the glorious past of alibaba, AI is the key for alibaba to open the future, alibaba hopes to spend more time on business rather than these time-consuming lawsuits, this is the battlefield that alibaba must win.