Text: Xiao Yu
Recently, Alibaba has made a big move. According to relevant reports, on April 24, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang stepped down as chairman and legal representative of Taobao and Tmall, and Dai Shan took over. These two companies happen to be the operating entities of Taobao and Tmall platforms. As Ma Yun's successor Daniel Zhang has stepped down from two companies in succession, which is inevitably evocative. Alibaba's response was that a series of changes were based on legal arrangements that aligned with rights and responsibilities.
So far, Alibaba's business has also been divided into 4 business segments, Dai Shan is in charge of Taobao and Tmall business, and Jiang Fan has also been transferred to overseas business. AutoNavi, Local Life and Fliggy form a life service sector, which is managed by Yu Yongfu, while the Cloud and Technology sector is headed by Zhang Jianfeng. Under the governance of pluralism, Ali has also been further divided, and each section has begun to be self-sufficient, which will inevitably bring about the result of "becoming smaller".
Why is Ali seeking to "get smaller"?
Of course, seeking to "become smaller" is also ali's active choice. As we all know, in recent years, Ali Capital's territory has been expanding, and Ma Yun has repeatedly said wildly, as he said: "If the bank does not change, then we will change the bank." And Ma Yun has indeed created a huge financial group- Ant Group, and even let the banks feel the crisis. Its business covers various segments such as banking, credit, funds, and payments, making it the world's largest unicorn. It can be seen that the ambition is great.
It is said that the tree is a big trick. Immediately after, Ma Yun was interviewed, Ant Group's listing plan was also suspended, Ali was fined 18.2 billion yuan for anti-monopoly investigation, and public opinion flooded To Ali. Later, even the entire Internet industry also entered a period of shock. Ma Yun also changed from the "godfather of the Internet" and "Papa Ma" to the "capitalist of all evils" in people's mouths.
Directly lead to Alibaba's market value "waist cut". As of April 27, Alibaba's latest market capitalization was $226.024 billion. Compared with the peak of 800 billion, more than 570 billion US dollars have been evaporated. At the same time, in the 2022 Hurun Rich List, Ma Yun,who was fourth in the list of China's richest people last year, lost more than 100 billion yuan in wealth and ranked fifth in China with 235 billion yuan. This is also the first time since 2015 that Ma Yun has fallen out of The Top Three in China.
At the same time, although As the founder, Ma Yun also began to try his best to break away from Alibaba, as early as 2013, Ma Yun resigned as ceo of Alibaba Group, and in 2019, he further stepped down as the chairman of the board of directors of the group, leaving the company fully managed by the Daniel Zhang. Until Ali's quarterly report released in August 2021, Ma Yun had disappeared from the shareholding list. Obviously, at present, Ma Yun is behind the scenes, and Ali's strategy of splitting up each section is a "flexible decision", which is also an inevitable choice.
Crazy expansion of the "ant"
In the past 10 years, Ali's expansion has indeed been excessive, especially the Ant Group under Ali. In 2013, on the basis of Alipay, Ali established a small and micro financial group, which was immediately renamed Ant Financial Services Group.
In the same year, the balance treasure was launched, and the scale of funds exceeded 10 billion yuan in only one month of going online, and at its peak, the scale of funds under management reached 1.83 trillion yuan, and it should be known that the deposits of the Bank of China at that time were only 1.79 trillion yuan. That is to say, the scale of the balance treasure is comparable to the four major banks. After that, Ant Group has successively launched a series of products such as Huabei, Borrowing, Sesame Credit, and Mutual Treasure, covering multiple sections including travel, real estate, catering, media, artificial intelligence and so on.
With the growth of the scale, the profit of Ant Group is also rising rapidly. In the first half of 2020 alone, the revenue reached 72.528 billion yuan, the net profit reached 21.923 billion yuan, and the net profit margin was 30.23%. Compared with the Bank of China, the net interest rate in 2020 is only 33.98%. It can be seen that the profitability of Ant Group and the Bank of China, one of the four major banks, are on a par, which can really be described as "a million profits".
For Ant Group, the most profitable thing is to lend, that is, to spend and borrow. At this time, many people will also say that Ma Yun is at least willing to lend me money to use, and there is a month of interest-free. However, is this money really lent by Ma Yun to users?
In fact, from the perspective of Huabei's main company, Ant Group actually only produced 3.8 billion yuan. Then through the ABS model, nearly 100 times the leverage was taken, and more than 400 billion yuan was lent out, most of which came from banks. This also means that once Huabei has a problem, Ant Group will only lose 3.8 billion yuan at most, and other risks will be borne by banks and other financial institutions. Passing the risk on to others while making a lot of profits yourself is neither clever nor clever.
The ant listing was terminated
Sure enough, winter finally came. The Rockbund Finance Summit event in October 2020... In November of the same year, the listing of ants was also suspended. After the suspension of listing, the size of Ant Group also began to shrink. Among them, the scale of Yu'e Bao has dropped to 749.117 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2021. In December 2021, Mutual Treasure was also shut down. In January this year, the new investment product "Golden Selection Investment" was also shut down.
Of course, Ali and the retraction of the ant does not represent the action of the ant. On April 18, Ant Group exposed another big move to restart its overseas strategy. It is reported that Ant Group has reached a deep cooperative relationship with 2C2P in the form of strategic investment, and 2C2P connects 250 payment methods in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and other regions, obviously the failure of listing has not terminated its desire to expand, and this cooperation will further expand its market share in Southeast Asia.
But that said, Internet companies should eventually return to the tech space. On April 15, the 2021 global cloud computing IaaS market share data was released, and Alibaba Cloud ranked third in the world, with a market share of 9.55%, achieving growth for six consecutive years. Surpassing Google Cloud, second only to Amazon and Microsoft. At the same time, Alibaba Cloud also ranks first in the Asia-Pacific market, with a market share of 25.53%. This achievement is indeed what Ali deserves to recognize.
It can be seen that the return to science and technology may be the most promising "antidote" for ants and Ali. The continuous investment in Alibaba Cloud should also be regarded as one of the most correct decisions made by Ma Yun and Ali.