electronic Global Trade Credit Platform/eGTCP's Blog: Alibaba Empire Expand to Offline: Leads $2.6bn Bid for Chinese Retailer Intime

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. recently announced that they would privatize Intime Retail, a leading China department store and mall operator. Alibaba will take big steps offline with $2.6 billion Intime deal.

Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma & Intime Retail founder Shen Guo Jun

Alibaba currently owns 28 percent of Intime following an initial investment in the retailer in 2014. If shareholders approve the deal, Alibaba would become the controlling shareholder of Intime with an expected stake of approximately 74 percent. Alibaba estimated the maximum amount of cash required to complete the deal at approximately HK$19.8 billion ($2.6 billion).

Since the growing slowly electricity economic market, Alibaba started to explore other new economic growth points. And it laid a solid foundation for Alibaba to retail entity economy. Apart from Intime, Alibaba has partnered with electronics chains Suning and Haier in deals that expanded its own online offerings and sales and delivery network.

The proposal, announced Monday, calls for an Alibaba subsidiary to team up with an entity wholly owned by Intime Retail founder Shen Guo Jun to buy out Intime shareholders and take the Hong Kong stock exchange listed company private. Under the proposal, the buyers will pay HK$10 per share for Intime stock, a 42 percent premium over the closing price of HK$7.03 on Dec. 28, 2016, before trading of Intime shares was suspended.

“This deal shows that there is still value to brick-and-mortar stores, enough to interest e-commerce players,” said Catherine Lim, a Singapore-based analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. What it's shown is that department store chains are still relevant and of value. We could be seeing renewal of a sunset industry.

“Alibaba will be able to do more experiments with Intime in the retail sector,” said Ray Zhao, a Shenzhen-based analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co. “Intime’s valuation is relatively low now so it would be a good time to buy.”

image credit: Business Insider

Alibaba is also trying to develop overseas market. On this Monday, the pledge from Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma came during a 40-minute New York meeting with U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump. Speaking to reporters afterwards, Trump said, “we had a great meeting…and (he’s) a great, great entrepreneur, one of the best in the world, and he loves this country, and he loves China.” Alibaba pledged to create 1 million U.S. jobs with him.

Bidding to Intime is based on a series of acquisitions on the past. Alibaba conducted 35 times acquisitions in the past 12 months, which value of $15.2 billion totally.

“We don’t divide the world into real or virtual economies, only the old and the new. Those who cling on to the old ways of retailing will be disrupted, and brick-and-mortar businesses will be able to create value for consumers if they are integrated with the power of mobile reach, real-time consumer insights, and technology capability to improve operating efficiency.”

“The most important opportunity on the horizon is not growing online sales in isolation but rather helping traditional retailers upgrade into a brand new retail model,” CEO Zhang said in October.