Alibaba Vs. Amazon Stock: Which Is The Better Buy

seekingalpha2021-03-12

Summary This article seeks to answer why deciding to hold Alibaba stock is so different from deciding to hold Amazon stock. A contrast of the business opportunities for Alibaba and Amazon. Discussing...

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Amazon Stock: Which Is The Better Buy\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-12 19:44 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413411-alibaba-vs-amazon-stock-which-is-better-buy-><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nThis article seeks to answer why deciding to hold Alibaba stock is so different from deciding to hold Amazon stock.\nA contrast of the business opportunities for Alibaba and Amazon.\nDiscussing...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413411-alibaba-vs-amazon-stock-which-is-better-buy-\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":null,"symbol_name":null,"start_time":0,"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413411-alibaba-vs-amazon-stock-which-is-better-buy-","article_id":"1199318380","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":[],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1199318380","pubTimestamp":1615549470,"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"seekingalpha","name":"Seeking Alpha"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"Summary\n\nThis article seeks to answer why deciding to hold Alibaba stock is so different from decidi","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"seekingalpha.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{},"translate_title":"阿里巴巴-SW对。亚马逊股票：买哪个更好","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"AMZN":0.9,"BABA":0.9},"content_text":"Summary\n\nThis article seeks to answer why deciding to hold Alibaba stock is so different from deciding to hold Amazon stock.\nA contrast of the business opportunities for Alibaba and Amazon.\nDiscussing why Amazon will find it hard to thrive in China to enjoy the same macro tailwinds as Alibaba.\nComparing the valuation between Alibaba and Amazon.\n\nI have covered Alibaba (BABA) and Amazon (AMZN) both withbullish calls several times before. The two e-commerce and cloud titans have compelling investment drivers. However, I argue in this article that Alibaba is the better buy right now. That said, readers are, of course, free to make your judgment based on the facts laid out here and elsewhere.\nAlibaba and Amazon's business moats and threats: Why deciding to hold Alibaba stock is so different from deciding to hold Amazon stock?\nAlibaba Group Holding and Amazon.com, Inc. have much in common. They started in e-commerce, became the leading player in the industry in their home country, and then branched out to other related businesses, notably the cloud computing service.\nAmazon's moat in e-commerce has been enhanced by its Amazon Prime membership. Paid users consolidate their purchases on its platform to \"recoup\" the fees and maximize the member benefits. This in turn helps Amazon to increase its economy of scale and optimize its infrastructure. The savings made are then passed on to users partially or in full to further entice them to stay within the ecosystem.\nAlibaba Group began at a time when paying a regular membership fee for bundled services and/or grocery delivery was an alien concept. Paying for a Netflix (NFLX) subscription or more appropriately, an iQIYI (IQ) subscription would be unthinkable in the 2000s when video piracy was rife. However, Alibaba found it could create a moat around its e-commerce business in another way.\nAlibaba realized the Chinese consumers were reluctant to shop online because of rampant fraud and quality issues in the early days. It solved the problem with the creation of Alipay, now operated by Ant Group, where Alibaba Group has a 33 percent equity stake. Alipay served as an online escrow system - sellers only get paid when the shoppers did not flag any discrepancies.\nAlipay has since evolved to provide a multitude of services, including the payment of offline purchases of any items where the seller has a functional QR code, as well as a quick checkout process for everyday routines like online food delivery and ride-hailing. The convenience it provides led users to be \"sticky\". A series of financial products and services are also developed to leverage this advantage.\nAll well and good. Investors love businesses with moats. Both Amazon and Alibaba have strong ones. However, the duo is threatened by government actions.\nSince November last year, Alibaba has been in the news mostly for the wrong reasons. Co-founder Jack Ma berated the regulators and days after, the IPO of Ant Group was suspended. The authorities stepped up on antitrust investigations, impacting both Ant Group and the e-commerce operations of Alibaba, spooking market players. Speculators also kept themselves busy with conspiracy theories as Jack Ma went \"missing\".\nIn the final days of the Trump administration, BABA stock was also under pressure by talks of an outright investment ban, as if The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act wasn't damaging enough. Nevertheless, looking at the swoon the share price was subjected to in the final two months of 2020, perhaps most of the disgruntled shareholders have already sold out of the stock, leaving \"diamond hands\" holding BABA, in Reddit-speak.\nSource: Alibaba Group\nThat would explain the more than 16 percent gain BABA stock achieved year-to-date prior to the correction plaguing technology and internet stocks in the past weeks. In contrast, AMZN was largely flat in the same period and is down 6.1 percent YTD even as BABA manages to be up 2.3 percent.\n\nCritics may cry foul that I missed out on the mention of its VIE structure. However, readers would agree with me that the issue has been repeated ad nauseam that I doubt the risk has yet to be priced in the shares.\nOn the contrary, the looming government scrutiny on U.S. tech companies including Amazon seems to be neglected by the market. For instance, President Joseph Biden decided to assign Tim Wu, a leader in the progressive movement to break up Big Tech, to the National Economic Council. Wu's signature warning is \"The antitrust winter is over.\"\nReports are now circulating that President Biden has planned to nominate Lina Khan, a legal scholar who has argued for tougher antitrust enforcement against big tech companies, to the Federal Trade Commission. With Amazon's size and market reach, it is bound to be within the crosshairs of the regulators. It is telling that Khan wrote in 2017 a Yale Law Journal article titled \"Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,\" the failure of the antitrust law in the current form in addressing the scope of Amazon's market power.\nThe shareholders of Alibaba would need to think if the risks are already priced into the stock while the shareholders of Amazon would need to face the prospect of the company tackling a harsher regulatory environment.\nBusiness opportunities for Alibaba and Amazon\nAlibaba Group is the leading cloud provider in China by far. According to industry consultant Canalys, Alibaba has 40.9 percent of China's cloud infrastructure spend in Q3 2020. The next largest player, Huawei, has less than half that market share at 16.2 percent. Tencent follows closely at 15.8 percent.\nAlibaba's large market share puts it in good stead to ride the growth in China's cloud computing market that is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.2 percent to reach US$63.7 billion in 2024. Worldwide, Alibaba Cloud has been steadily increasing its market share. It managed to leapfrog IBM (IBM) last year. On the other hand, while Amazon is the global cloud giant, Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG)(GOOGL) are fast challenging its dominant position.\nSource: Synergy Research Group\nAlibaba is also the undisputed largest e-commerce player in the world's most populous nation. Although it may seem like online shopping is highly prevalent in China for a long time, retail e-commerce sales were only around one-third of the total retail sales in the country in 2019. The pandemic accelerated the shift from offline to online and bumped the percentage to 44.8 percent last year. eMarketer predicts that the share of online shopping will continue to grow steadily in the next few years to reach 58.1 percent in 2024.\nSource: eMarketer\nOn the other hand, while Amazon is the e-commerce leader by far in the U.S., it is in a market where retail e-commerce sales are growing at a relative snail's pace. After a spectacular 2020, the retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. are estimated to grow at just 6.1 percent this year. In contrast, China's retail e-commerce sales are projected to grow more than three times faster at 21 percent, despite a base nearly thrice that of the U.S.\nSource: eMarketer\nOn a macro level and a longer-term consideration, Alibaba's home base is also in a sweet spot. According to a group of scholars from the prestigious Tsinghua University, the per capita GDP of China would more than triple by 2050, rising from USD18,291 to USD60,948 in 2050, almost double that of the world. This bodes well for the growth prospects of Alibaba Group. In the same period, the per capita GDP of the U.S. is projected to increase by a mere 52 percent, although that would still be higher than that of China.\nSource: 2050 China - Becoming a Great Modern Socialist Country\nDespite the brighter opportunities, Alibaba's market cap is less than half that of Amazon. Alibaba is also deemed to be undervalued based on valuation metrics as we will explore in the subsequent sections. Before that, I recognize there are fast-thinking readers who are wondering: what if Amazon could expand in China and enjoy the macro tailwinds as Alibaba is doing?\n\nCould Amazon excel in China?\nThis is a very interesting topic to explore and deserves a separate article. Nevertheless, as this is relevant to the comparison, I hope to briefly outline the key points to get the discussion going.\nIt is possible that American firms succeed in China. There are many examples such as Starbucks (SBUX), McDonald's (MCD), YUM! Brands (YUM), Nike (NKE), Microsoft, and Mettler Toledo (MTD), just to name a few. The most prominent brands in recent years doing well in China include Tesla (TSLA) and Lululemon (LULU).\nHowever, we also have many precedents of American firms failing to master the competitive landscape in China or were unwilling to comply with the local laws. Yahoo and eBay (EBAY) belong to the former while Alphabet's Google and Facebook (FB) are some examples of the latter.\nIn terms of retail, the closest matches are Walmart (WMT) and Target Corporation (TGT). The two are striving in China, so wouldn't Amazon too? It's possible but I see several obstacles.\nFirstly, the management of those companies who do well in China tends to be effusive in their praises for the country and its government (e.g. Elon Musk). They also do not get involved in political commentary whether in China or anywhere else.\nUnfortunately, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has been long known to be active in doing his political \"talking\" with his checkbook. Don't believe me? Try Googling \"Jeff Bezos politics\" and see for yourself the search results. Would he be able to stay quiet as Amazon expands its presence in China while staying out of trouble?\nSecondly, many of the U.S. companies growing in China are consumer brands where a Chinese equivalent isn't just the same thing. Sure, the latter has a huge market as well, like how Li Ning (OTCPK:LNNGF)(OTCPK:LNNGY) can grow together with Nike and adidas (OTCQX:ADDDF)(OTCQX:ADDYY), whereas the failure of Luckin Coffee (OTCPK:LKNCY) showed how difficult it is to unseat Starbucks, the King of Coffee.\nAmazon, while it has several house brands, is essentially a platform and operates in the harsh internet sector. There is already ultra stiff competition among Chinese e-commerce and cloud players resulting in heavy losses to gain market share. The business climate is so challenging that there were recent reports of suicides stemming from Pinduoduo (PDD). If the domestic firms are already working to their necks, could Amazon with its American style of operation thrive or even survive in the tough environment?\nJeff Bezos admitted as much about how Amazon failed in China in past interviews: \"We mostly tried to roll out what worked well for us in Japan, Germany, the U.K., Spain, France, Italy, the U.S., etc., and it needed more local market customization.\"\nChinese commentary also revealed that Amazon China's inept challenge to local rivals stemmed from the insistence of decision-making tightly controlled by the U.S. headquarters where the China team merely played the role of executioner. A flaw business strategy will be difficult to succeed however excellent the execution is. Things may have changed but there is nothing in recent news flow to suggest otherwise.\nThirdly, e-commerce companies in China rely on a multitude of drivers to support the core online shopping business. There is the mobile payment (Alipay for Alibaba), massive logistics (Cainiao, among others, for Alibaba), livestreaming (Taobao Live for Alibaba), as well as affiliated businesses like travel booking site Fliggy and food delivery Ele.me to keep users within the ecosystem.\nHow long would Amazon take to build that scale of ecosystem? How much money would that require? Is the company prepared to invest billions upon billions as the Chinese internet companies have done? Even if it's willing, there is no guarantee it can match the competition as the existing players continue to innovate.\nThus, I found it improbable that Amazon could enjoy the same macro tailwinds as Alibaba, leaving the question of why the latter remains undervalued.\nValuation comparison between Alibaba and Amazon stocks\nSeeking Alpha Premium users would know the platform provides a neat valuation tool for a convenient comparison of two or more stocks. I lay out a snapshot as follows, where the green shaded boxes indicate the preferred metric value.\nSource: Seeking Alpha Premium data (March 9, 2021), tabulated by ALT Perspective\nAt one glance, it's easy to see that BABA stock is attractive both on the key earnings metrics P/E and PEG ratios. It is also very cheap on the price-to-book ratio as compared to Amazon. In terms of liquidity metrics, Alibaba is also superior to Amazon. Of course, Amazon has its strengths too, winning on price-to-sales ratio and historical EBITDA growth, among others.\nAs the stock market indices continue to register new record highs, echoes of the 2000 internet bubble bursting are ringing loudly. However, it bears noting that a cash crunch in many dot-com businesses was a key trigger in the meltdown. Today, internet companies like Alibaba and Amazon are cash-rich.\nBased on the last quarterly reports, both Alibaba and Amazon coincidentally have net cash of around $53 billion each. Given that Alibaba has a smaller enterprise value, that net cash is a larger part of Alibaba (8.8 percent) than it is for Amazon (3.3 percent).\n\nAt the same time, Alibaba has a higher free cash flow in the past two quarters than Amazon. If that becomes a trend, the market would come to recognize the money-generator Alibaba is and reward the company accordingly.\n\nShould you buy Alibaba or Amazon stock?\nOf course, having read this article until this point, you know my bias is towards Alibaba. However, I do recognize Amazon can provide capital appreciation to investors as well. It is just that comparing the two stocks as I did in the earlier sections, Alibaba seems more compelling to me at this point.\nWall Street analysts seem to agree. The consensus price target for Alibaba is at $325, an upside of 44 percent. In contrast, Amazon has a lower, albeit still attractive, upside of 37 percent. What is your take? 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