4月12日阿里巴巴集團電話會議節錄，加最新估值

4月12日阿里巴巴集團因被罰而舉行電話會議(Administrative Penalty Decision Conference Call)，以下是一些節錄。

被罰的撮要:

As you have seen on April 10, Alibaba Group received the Administrative Penalty Decision issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation of the People's Republic of China. The State Administration for Market Regulation, which we refer to as SAMR, is the regulatory agency that is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Anti-Monopoly Law of China. The Anti-Monopoly Law, we will refer to here as the AML.

The penalty decision was the result of an investigation that was commenced in December 2020 relating to activities that would be prohibited under the AML. Specifically, under Article 17 clause 4 of the AML, a business operator that has a dominant market position is prohibited from restricting business counterparties by requiring exclusive arrangements without justifiable cause. The penalty decision described the results of SAMR's investigation and concluded that Alibaba was in violation of Article 17 clause 4 of the AML.

As a result, under the remediation and penalty provisions of the AML, the SAMR issued the following actions: number one, Alibaba as a platform operator shall not restrict merchants from doing business or running promotions on competitor platforms. In this connection, the SAMR provided administrative guidance for Alibaba to implement a comprehensive program of rectification, including strictly fulfilling our responsibility as a platform operator, strengthening our internal controls and compliance, upholding fair competition and protecting the interests of our platforms, consumers and merchants.

The second action that the SAMR imposed on Alibaba is a monetary penalty of CNY 18.2 billion or approximately USD 2.8 billion. The penalty decision stated that this amount is based on applying 4% -- applying a 4% rate to Alibaba Group's calendar 2019 revenues derived from China. To put this into perspective, under the AML, monetary penalties of up to 10% of revenues can be imposed at the discretion of the authorities. The amount of the penalty is less than 20% of the free cash flow of Alibaba Group in the latest 12 months. We will pay this penalty out of our available liquidity, which, as of December 31, 2020, stood at approximately USD 70 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

關於財務impact:

we will further strengthen our focus on customer value creation and consumer experience. And we will -- so in this regard, we will continue to introduce new measures to lower -- first, to lower the entry barriers and business cost of our merchants on our platform. So I think in this regard, we will do more to help our merchants, including brand partners and retailers, to reduce their operating cost on our platform.

For example, during the past few months, we've already, step-by-step, waiving some technology service fee, as we usually do. Even in previous years, we always do that. Like for standard software services with mature technologies, we will waive the technology service fee, while at the same time with the continuous improvement of the technology and upgrading of the technology, we have most premium tech services available for our client. But we still -- this is still a paid service.

So over years, more and more mature services will be free, and we will offer new services. But the key thing is to give our merchants more tools, more services for them to run a business on our platform with lower cost. And on the other hand, we will also invest more to improve the -- for example, the merchant training and also for the merchant growth and to optimize their back-end workstation on our platform...we will incur additional costs, and we will -- but we don't view this as a one-off cost. But we view it as a necessary investment to enable our merchants to have a better operation on our platform. So we will do this from these 2 sides

...

we're going to both reduce fees and charges to help merchants and brands, at the same time also invest and spend more for them. So the impact going to be both reflected in both top line and bottom line. So overall, we have reserved billions of RMB in additional annual spending to support initiatives in the future year. 

關於商家和客戶retention impact:

We have hundreds of millions of users and millions of merchants with us. And our consumer purchasing power is over like RMB 900[0] per year and which demonstrate to all the merchants that we have the -- all the sectors of the consumers with us and including the sectors who has the most powerful consumption power. So -- and I think that's the key reason why all these merchants are with us. And over years, we work together and we grow with each other. And for Alibaba, it's very clear that we provide the value to the merchant for their growth and for their consumer education, consumer connection and a lot of merchant service back end. And we don't rely on exclusivity to retain our merchants.

And if you look at the exclusivity arrangement before, I would say this only cover a couple of -- a number of Tmall flagship stores, which directly operate by brands. But actually, today, all the merchants, they have these multi-platform strategies. And either they work with platform like us with the direct operation by flagship store format or they have their operation or distribution business in other platform or they have their distributors to run the so-called flagship in other platform. So business-wise, we don't think -- we don't expect material negative impact on the change of this arrangement. And once again, we will continue to work with our merchants, provide them with the necessary services, better services they need to grow their business on our platform.

其他手尾?

So the regulators are -- have increased on mergers, acquisitions and strategic investment transactions as part of their merger control review process. And the entire industry, including several of our peers' companies, are also subject to the same review. Other than the merger control review on investment transactions, we're not aware of any other investigations relating to the Anti-Monopoly Law.

其他問題:

how would you encourage global investors to think about the regulatory environment and the competitive intensity in this new phase not just for Alibaba but for the technology sector in general? And what should we expect this would mean or might mean or could possibly mean for equity valuations and opportunities for global investors on a go-forward basis?

[T]his action is very clear, and the regulators' communication to the public is very clear that they're affirming our business model. There's this phrase called the platform economies and/or platform operators, and our business model as a platform is actually fully endorsed and affirmed by the authorities that this kind of model is good for the growth of the country's economy and also helps promote innovation. So we feel very comfortable that there's nothing wrong with our business, the fundamental business model of the platform company. And these regulatory actions are undertaken to ensure fair competition in order to benefit the public, the consumers, the merchants, all the constituencies in a platform economy. So we're -- so with this penalty decision, we've received a good guidance on some of the specific issues under the Anti-Monopoly Law. And I would say that we are pleased that we're able to put this matter behind us.

So I think in terms of how global investors should view our -- the industry as a whole and also the regulations of the industry is that, number one, large-scale Internet companies are doing a lot of good things for the economy, to help grow the economy, that in China, specifically, the policy of focusing on digitizing the economy to benefit -- to lower the barriers for average citizens to access products and services is very, very clear. And we're playing in the middle of this, promoting that government policy.

So the -- from a regulatory standpoint, I think every large-scale technology company will face -- in our case, we have experienced this scrutiny, and we're happy to get the matter behind us. But I think on a going forward basis, globally, the trend is that regulators will be more keen to look at some of the areas where you could have unfair competition. So I think the good thing about this is that we are -- we have gone through this process with the regulators. We've gotten to know their thinking very well. It's a very healthy process, and we have a very established plan for correcting some of the practices. And also, we have established very good internal control and compliance systems to continue to comply with the law.

個人意見

阿里的電商生意雖然會繼續是龍頭，但確實給削弱了，盈利能力也減弱了一點，這些會在估值中反應。

以之前管理層的估值為藍本，阿里的估值可以這樣計:

Taobao + Tmall (marketplace-based core commerce): $32 billion USD。之前管理層用25倍，我用20倍，這塊值$640 billion

螞蟻的1/3，估計: $20 billion

$45 billion的其他投資

阿里雲，假設穩定後profit margin 10%，P/E 40，那P/S就是4。2020年revenue: $8.3 billion，這塊值: $33 billion

總共是: $640 + 20 + 45 + 33 = $738 billion，用2.8 billion ADS計，每股$263。

其他免費：盒馬、菜鳥、餓了麼、口碑等等。另外高德、優酷土豆等等。還有$30 billion之上net cash。要留意的是，阿里的自駕技術(最少在不載客的情況下)應該已接近level 4，靠高德+千尋+達摩院+平頭哥，這部份也沒計入估值。

個人仍然認為市值$1 trillion以下的阿里可以隨便買，即每股$357。