Alibaba: The Pain Could Just Be Starting For Chinese Tech

Seekingalpha2023-11-29

Alibaba's stock may look suitable for investment due to strong fundamentals.However, geopolitical-related factors, such as U.S. chip restrictions, pose risks to Alibaba's revenue growth given its ...

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hphoa
·2023-11-29
不叫八八，叫爺爺
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Toby_Chua
·2023-11-29
Be greedy when others are fearful
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Andrewinho
·2023-11-29
RUN!! 😱😱😱
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href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4654600-alibaba-the-pain-could-just-be-starting-for-chinese-tech><strong>Seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Alibaba's stock may look suitable for investment due to strong fundamentals.However, geopolitical-related factors, such as U.S. chip restrictions, pose risks to Alibaba's revenue growth given its ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4654600-alibaba-the-pain-could-just-be-starting-for-chinese-tech\">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":"LU0130102774.USD","symbol_name":"Natixis Harris Associates US Equity RA 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fundamentals.However, geopolitical-related factors, such as U.S. chip restrictions, pose risks to Alibaba's revenue growth given its strong reliance on artificial intelligence.Alibaba also faces competition from American and Chinese cloud providers, hindering its market share growth in the IaaS industry.While the management has mentioned that it intends to boost domestic production using open-source technology, it has not substantiated its statements with figures in my view.In view of its strong balance sheet, reorganization, and dividend payments, the stock is a hold.If you have wondered whether chip restrictions preventing exports of advanced GPU-based AI computing to China had any effect, look no further than Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), the eCommerce and cloud computing giant. Its stock benefits from superior fundamentals including growth and profitability showing up in green as pictured below. However, I believe factors like geopolitical tensions can impact its ability to grow revenues in the future.Quant Ratings (seekingalpha.com)Also, it is important to check whether the high profitability being enjoyed now does not come at the expense of investing money to ensure future growth. Thus, by highlighting the areas of the business likely to be impacted by U.S. chip restrictions and showing that the capital allocation strategy does not seem geared towards addressing the risks, this thesis aims to show that it is not the right time to invest or add to your position.Amid encouraging news about indigenous innovations in advanced chip technology, I start by highlighting how the very ingredients used for building the tech giant's intelligent cloud infrastructure are facing supply uncertainty.AI Chip Restrictions Starting to BiteSome will remember that barely three weeks back or on November 3, the company unveiled its Zhenyue 510 chip. Developed by its chip design subsidiary, T-Head, the controller IC is destined to be deployed in Alibaba's data centers to provide support for applications such as AI training, online transactions, and big data analysis. The subsidiary had previously designed both an AI (artificial intelligence) and a CPU chip.These chips are based on RISC-V-based technology, which is open-source or can be used by anyone without requiring a license from Arm Holdings (ARM) whose chip designs are widely used throughout the world, but many are not exported to China. Now, these developments were acclaimed as important milestones in pursuit of Chinese technological independence and it came as no surprise that Alibaba’s shares gained over 2 dollars as depicted by the green arrow below when the news hit the market.www.seekingalpha.comThis independence means not relying on U.S. components, especially those produced by Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), who are barred from exporting their AI-enabling GPU chips to China following the October 2022 restrictions.However, this idea of being independent now appears in doubt as the shares dropped by more than $7 on November 15 (red arrow above) following the scrapping of IPO plans for Alibaba's Cloud Intelligence Group due to further U.S. chip restrictions. The latest ones enforced in October cover additional chips like the A800, which Nvidia designed specifically for its Chinese customers, given that it could not export its advanced A100 and H100 chips to that country. The same applies to Intel (INTC) and AMD.According to Alibaba's press release (with the pain points underlined in red below), this will adversely impact its cloud business' ability to offer products and services.seekingalpha.comThis news update by Alibaba confirms the risks I had already evoked in an earlier thesis last year and the next step is to quantify the impact.The Risks to Revenue Growth for Intelligent CloudHaving generated $51.4 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2024 (Q2-2024), Cloud Intelligence Group is second only to Taobao/Tmall as shown below. Furthermore, it has grown by only 3% YoY or far below the double-digit figures of 2020-2022. One of the reasons for this gloomy performance is that the business has not fully recovered after ByteDance (TikTok owner) stopped using it for outside-of-China hosting purposes in 2021 and instead chose Amazon (AMZN) and Oracle (ORCL), following intense pressure from authorities in the U.S. on data privacy grounds.seekingalpha.comNow, in addition to these two American public cloud providers, the Chinese company also faces competition from Microsoft (MSFT), with Azure Cloud, and Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) with Google Cloud Platform, without forgetting Huawei Technologies and Tencent Holdings (OTCPK:TCEHY), in its home market.Looking at market share for the 2021-2022 period, a report by Gartner on the worldwide Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) industry dated July this year shows that Alibaba has trailed all others with only 2.4% growth.Chart built using data from (www.gartner.com)Noteworthily, in addition to computing power for normal IT (transactional) workloads, Gartner adds that customers now require more advanced analytics among other features.Possible Risks to Alibaba International Business tooNow, since the company did earlier announce an upgrade of its AI infrastructure including deployment of its Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 LLM (large language model) during the Apsara Conference, it may be holding a stock of Nvidia’s previous-generation A100 GPU chips, already deployed for AI workloads. However, new restrictions ban their export to China. In these circumstances, I find it hard to identify who will buy cloud-based AI servers from the Chinese company even if it provides discounts since ChatGPT-style applications demand high-performance GPUs to work optimally.There is worse given that the company synergizes the capabilities of its intelligent cloud infrastructure across its eCommerce platforms for example to make the shopping experience more consumer-centric by using AI applications. Chip restrictions would mean that it will have to rely on older chip models like Nvidia's V100 launched in 2017 to train its LLMs whereas competitor Amazon and others have access to the latest and faster H100 chips developed in 2022.Therefore, restrictions may pose a competitive threat to the Chinese eCommerce and cloud computing giant's integrated business model, especially for Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group which grew by 53% YoY during the latest reported quarter. When combined with the cloud business, the international eCommerce Group represented around $99.3 billion (according to the above table) or 20% of the company's sales in Q2-2024, which is substantial. Thus, I believe that in case these two groups were to be materially impacted, the company could miss its fiscal 2025 revenue estimate of $146.4 billion as pictured below.seekingalpha.comTherefore, based on the identification of areas likely to be impacted by chip restrictions, revenue growth is at risk. In the same breath, the stock is not necessarily undervalued based on its forward price-to-sales of 1.49x, which is above the median for the Consumer Discretionary sector by more than 75%.Analyzing the Capital Allocation Strategy in View of Supply RisksMoreover, for a company that is facing risks as to the very building blocks of its AI infrastructure, you would have expected it to attract equity funding through the cloud IPO given the enormous amounts of money involved in chip production. However, with the public offering canceled, funding will be sought for the company's international eCommerce business. Now, while the objective to build a \"world-leading digitalized supply chain network\" seems appropriate in view of Alibaba's experience in the Chinese market, the intention of also making intensive use of AI for innovations across the platform may not be well digested by potential investors, in view of U.S. restrictions.Furthermore, since Alibaba is already sitting on a giant cash pile of $51.5 billion (net of debt) there is less need to seek outside funding which may also imply a dilution of share ownership if equity funding is sought after.Coming back to the AI realm, the management mentioned that it is exploring native (or domestic) solutions and that the Cloud Intelligence Group will \"scale up its technology investments in AI-related software and hardware\" through the use of open-source technologies like RISC-V as mentioned earlier. These points are clearly aimed at addressing the issues posed by chip restrictions, but they fall short of an investment plan including the amount being (or to be) spent, and clear milestones as to when the processors will enter production for equipping its data centers given that Alibaba cloud operates in 30 regions across the world.On the contrary, a look at the capital expenditure during the last five quarters shows that it is on a net downtrend. Now, when subtracting this lower Capex from the cash from operations, the result is higher free cash flow. Interestingly, its FCF margin of 14.17% which is above Consumer Discretionary peers by over 170% is one of the reasons the company enjoys a profitability grade of A+, but this may be coming at a cost: not investing for future growth.Chart built using cash flow statement data from (seekingalpha.com)This is especially true in the current global computing scenario when there is a fundamental paradigm change whereby the demand for IT workloads on the cloud is shifting from conventional computing to AI. This is the reason why cloud service providers like Amazon and Microsoft have been purchasing Nvidia H100 GPUs.Now, in the absence of such a supplier from its supply chain, it is important for a cloud computing giant like Alibaba to elaborate on the amount of money it is investing in advanced chips as part of a contingency plan to continue providing an intelligent cloud infrastructure that can compete internationally.Strong Balance Sheet and Reorganization but Plan Needed in View of RestrictionsIn conclusion, this thesis has shown that given the risks that can affect Alibaba's results of operations and financial condition, there has been no mention of a capital allocation strategy to specifically address the issue of chip restrictions in the second quarter's earnings call, possibly because it already possesses some unused stock of advanced chips in its inventory in my view.Moreover, given the strength of its balance sheet, and the internal reorganization that has identified cost optimization and growth opportunities, Alibaba has the financial capacity to boost indigenous production to meet its AI chip requirements, somewhat similar to what Huawei has done with its Mate 50. Furthermore, earning dividends as a way to enhance shareholder return is a positive for those who have been holding on to the stock. For this matter, in addition to the $2.5 billion of distributions to be made to shareholders, the company effected $1.7 billion of share buybacks in Q2-2024.These are the reasons why I have a Hold rating as Alibaba also remains a strong player on its home turf with Taobao and Tmall and a market where it faces much smaller competitors in the form of JD.com (JD) and Pinduoduo. Finally, it is important to obtain an update as to how the company is tackling chip restrictions in a sustainable manner during next quarter's earnings call in February.","kind":null,"is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[{"id":246703635054888,"gmtCreate":1701251686867,"gmtModify":1701251691269,"author":{"id":"3578790486524477","authorId":"3578790486524477","name":"hphoa","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/28a11e936497493af7ee5ccdc32238a3","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3578790486524477","authorIdStr":"3578790486524477"},"htmlText":"不叫八八，叫爺爺","listText":"不叫八八，叫爺爺","text":"不叫八八，叫爺爺","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/246703635054888","repostId":2387427251,"repostType":2,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"CN"},{"id":246620306128904,"gmtCreate":1701231444263,"gmtModify":1701231449714,"author":{"id":"3576326749731922","authorId":"3576326749731922","name":"Toby_Chua","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/82ec063fd73ccbceee82eab015cdf3fd","vip":1,"hat":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b073a07f77dbe6b3bec6b12311fde6bd","crmLevel":7,"crmLevelSwitch":1,"idStr":"3576326749731922","authorIdStr":"3576326749731922"},"htmlText":"Be greedy when others are fearful&nbsp;","listText":"Be greedy when others are fearful&nbsp;","text":"Be greedy when others are fearful","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/246620306128904","repostId":2387427251,"repostType":4,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":246607563886688,"gmtCreate":1701228228213,"gmtModify":1701228233339,"author":{"id":"3581563418944392","authorId":"3581563418944392","name":"Andrewinho","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3127e2bc40ab23064a5187a00a63e19b","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3581563418944392","authorIdStr":"3581563418944392"},"htmlText":"RUN!! 😱😱😱","listText":"RUN!! 😱😱😱","text":"RUN!! 😱😱😱","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/246607563886688","repostId":2387427251,"repostType":4,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"}],"hasMoreComments":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":14,"commentSize":3,"repostSize":1,"favoriteSize":2,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false}}