On January 2, Alibaba announced an update on its share buyback. As of December 31, 2024, Alibaba repurchased a total of 0.119 billion shares of ordinary stock at a total price of 1.3 billion USD, equivalent to 15 million American depositary shares.

Continuous buyback.

The announcement shows that these repurchases were made in the USA market according to the company's share buyback plan. Compared to September 30, 2024, by December 31, 2024, the company's circulating ordinary shares decreased by 0.103 billion shares, representing a net decrease ratio of 0.6%.

As of December 31, 2024, Alibaba still has 20.7 billion USD remaining under the share buyback plan authorized by the Board of Directors, valid until March 2027.

Overall, Alibaba repurchased 5.8 billion USD and 4.1 billion USD in the first two fiscal quarters of 2025 respectively.

The Historical Data of share repurchases also indicates that Alibaba has conducted various scales of buybacks over multiple quarters. In the past fiscal year 2024, Alibaba invested a total of 12.5 billion USD in buybacks, maintaining the highest buyback scale among Chinese concept stocks.

Recently exited retail assets.

In recent times, Alibaba has attracted market attention due to its slimming actions in its investment portfolio. On January 1, following the sale of Intime Retail for 7.4 billion yuan, Alibaba sold SUNART RETAIL for 13.138 billion HKD.

Specifically, on January 1, Alibaba announced that its subsidiary and New Retail entered into an agreement with Dehong Capital to sell all of its equity in SUNART RETAIL, accounting for approximately 78.7% of SUNART RETAIL's total issued shares.

The announcement revealed that Alibaba will continue to focus on core business and enhance Shareholder returns. Alibaba's subsidiary and New Retail will be entitled to receive a maximum amount of 13.138 billion Hong Kong dollars for the shares to be sold, equivalent to 1.75 Hong Kong dollars per share.

In 2017, Alibaba initially acquired a stake in SUNART RETAIL, and after further Shareholding in 2020, SUNART RETAIL became a consolidated subsidiary of the Alibaba Group.

SUNART RETAIL is the parent company of RT-Mart. In 2011, RT-Mart merged with Auchan Group to form SUNART RETAIL, and the same year it was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. As of the third quarter of this year, SUNART RETAIL has 466 RT-Mart stores, 30 RT-Mart Super (China Super) stores, and 6 M membership stores.

The Earnings Reports show that in 2017, SUNART RETAIL had revenue of 102.32 billion yuan and Net income of 3.02 billion yuan. In fiscal year 2024, SUNART RETAIL had revenue of 72.5 billion yuan and a Net income of -1.668 billion yuan, turning from profit to loss. In the first half of this year, SUNART RETAIL achieved revenue of 34.708 billion yuan and Net income of 0.186 billion yuan, turning losses into profits.

Just recently, on December 17, 2024, Alibaba Group sold Intime Retail for 7.4 billion yuan. At that time, Alibaba announced that it would sell approximately 99% of its stake in Intime to a purchasing consortium formed by Youngor Group and members of the Intime management team. Alibaba's announcement stated that it expected to record a loss of approximately 9.3 billion yuan due to the sale of Intime.

Recently, Alibaba has orderly exited non-core Assets, and the signal of strategic focus on core business development has become clearer. Previously, in September 2023, Alibaba Group established the two major strategic focuses of 'User First, AI Driven' and stated that it would reorganize its Business around these two focuses, reshaping the strategic priorities of its Business. In the past year, Alibaba has resolutely implemented strategic focus, clearly made choices, and focused development resources on e-commerce and cloud+AI to drive long-term growth of core business.

Editor/lambor