2017 is a year of rapid progress under Ali's **. In 2016, Ma Yun pointed out that "the so-called new retail - pure e-commerce will have no way out, the combination of online and offline can effectively drive development, and the root of logistics is to eliminate inventory." ”
As soon as Ma Yun's voice fell, in 2017, Ali began to sweep goods frantically, buying and buying all the way.
On January 10, 2017, Alibaba announced that it would become the controlling shareholder of Yintai, increasing its shareholding to 74%. In the past few years, Ali has successively eaten Sanjiang Shopping, RT-Mart, Lianhua, Bailian, Xinhuadu, as well as Actually Home, Red Star Macalline, including mutual shares with Suning, and so on.
Even at the end of 2017, Nanjing's ** shopping mall issued an announcement that the company planned to sign an agreement on the establishment of a new retail development company with Yintai Investment, a subsidiary of Alibaba. *The mall holds 29% of the shares, and Yintai Investment holds 71%. According to the announcement at the time, the so-called new retail development company planned to expand commercial stores in Jiangsu Province. However, since then, the two sides have not been able to implement the agreement plan for some reasons.
The crazy combination of vertical and horizontal allowed Ali at that time to expose its huge ambition to dominate the entire online and offline retail format in China. The encroachment of e-commerce has also made a large number of heads of offline physical retail worship and even superstition for these Internet giants who "change reality with technology".
Seven years have passed since Jack Ma proposed new retail, and it seems that online has not brought great innovation and empowerment to offline entities. The integration of online and offline has not achieved the icing on the cake for traditional retail, but those small and beautiful companies with Internet genes have achieved a different new experience of buying and selling.
On February 1, it was reported that Alibaba Group was considering Yintai Retail, its department store and shopping mall operator. According to the report, as early as the end of 2023, when Tsai Chongxin became the chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba, the ** plan was launched. At present, Alibaba has approached several companies with potential acquisition intentions.
Ali and Yintai were born together in Hangzhou. With the rise of Alibaba's e-commerce, Yintai has shown a positive attitude of cooperation. In 2013, Yintai participated in the **Tmall promotion and tried offline purchase and online payment mode. Ali is also actively cooperating.
In 2014, Yintai continued to take the initiative to bring in Alibaba as a shareholder. At that time, Ali Group won with 53Invested HK$700 million in Yintai Commercial to establish the "New Yintai" joint venture. In 2015, Alibaba increased its stake in Yintai through convertible bonds and became the largest shareholder of Yintai, and Daniel Zhang officially became the CEO of Yintai. By 2016, Alibaba's total holdings in Yintai reached 2790% and became the largest shareholder. The shareholding ratio of the Shen ** family, the founder and former chairman of Yintai, has increased from 2187% to 1756%。
In 2017, Alibaba and Shen **, Chairman of Yintai Group, initiated the privatization of Yintai Commercial Group, with a transaction amount of HK$19.8 billion. Alibaba Holdings reached 74%.
It is said that at that time, the premium given by Alibaba to acquire Yintai reached more than 40%. Before the privatization in 2017, Yintai's total revenue was about RMB6 billion, with a growth rate of 4%, and the profit attributable to shareholders was 13200 million yuan, the growth rate is only 02%, falling into a state of sluggish growth. Alibaba's purchase price was HK$10 shares, while Yintai's ** price at that time was only HK$7 shares, which means that Ali gave about 42% more**.
It is easy to please God, but it is difficult to send God. I have to say that Ali really overestimated the power of new retail at the beginning, and thought about the integration of online and offline too perfectly. As a traditional brick-and-mortar department store retailer, Yintai Retail is facing a huge "lack of innovation", and once the traditional brick-and-mortar department store lacks freshness, it will be lackluster for the new generation of consumers, and most of the products in the market will be high and have no competitive advantage.
In the face of Yintai, which is highly homogeneous with other department stores and has no characteristics, who can Ali sell it to now, and what is the selling point?
Last year, Ma Yun's new policy for Ali is to "return to the Internet", to put it bluntly, it is to return to traffic, and such traffic is low price - represented by **, and user reputation as the center. Jack Ma's new policy is being firmly implemented by the new CEO Wu Yongming.
From 2015 to 2018, Ali rushed into a large number of offline physical retail, and even now, it still makes Ali indigestible. When e-commerce is generally facing huge traffic pressure, competitive pressure, and the long-term depth of the capital market is not optimistic, Ali needs to "return" again, and needs to package and deal with these indigestion offline entities.
At the end of last year, Ali first transferred the shares of Actually Home and Red Star Macalline. On November 30 last year, Ali Network and Hangzhou Haoyue signed the "Share Transfer Agreement", and Ali Network will hold about 24.8 billion A shares were transferred to Hangzhou Haoyue, accounting for 570%。The transfer per share** is RMB424 yuan, the total consideration is about 105.2 billion yuan. After the completion of the transfer, Alibaba Network no longer holds any shares of Macalline; On December 3, Ali Network signed an equity transfer agreement with Hangzhou Haoyue, and Ali Network intends to hold about 5 of its own home7.7 billion unrestricted tradable shares (918%) was transferred to Hangzhou Haoyue at a total price of about 204.8 billion yuan. After the completion of the transfer, Ali Network will no longer hold shares in the home.
Although Hangzhou Haoyue is an internal enterprise of Alibaba Group, from the perspective of business segments, it is more like an investment platform. In other words, Ali is gradually packaging some of its tasteless but "helpless" shares into a platform company, in a sense, allowing Ali Network to focus on the main business of e-commerce and realize the "return to the Internet".
In addition to Yintai, Actually Home, Red Star Macalline, Ali also has Sun Art Retail (RT-Mart), and RT-Mart's performance over the years is estimated to have made Ali's intestines regret.
According to Sun Art's retail financial report, the financial report data shows that the company achieved revenue of 836 in fiscal year 20236.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 51%；Net profit attributable to the parent company 10.9 billion yuan, to achieve a turnaround, but the scale of profits is still hovering near the breakeven line. According to the 2024 semi-annual report, Sun Art's retail performance has once again turned from a profit to a loss, and the loss margin is also widening compared with the same period last year. And so far in 2020, Sun Art's retail share price has fallen so much that it has almost become a floor price.
On December 20, Wu Yongming made a series of capital plans, including considering Hema Xiansheng. In response, Hema responded that the news was a false rumor. Now it seems that Ali's putting Hema on the shelves may not be groundless.
At the beginning of 2023, Hema CEO Hou Yi revealed that Hema Fresh has achieved profitability. In mid-October last year, Hema launched a discount reform to comprehensively optimize the first-class chain and provide more consumers with high-quality and low-cost goods.
After so many years, whether Hema is profitable or not, and what such a profit statistics are, the outside world does not know, from the perspective of growth rate and scale, the situation of Hema may not be a plus for Ali.
In December 2023, Alibaba announced that it would lead the formation of an asset management company led by Dai Shan. According to a report by China Entrepreneur Magazine, offline non-core assets such as Yintai and Sun Art Retail are most likely to be included in asset management companies and be included. However, in today's economic environment, these unsatisfactory and well-known brick-and-mortar businesses, and may continue to require a lot of "burning money", it is really difficult to say whether they can "get out".
According to statistics, as of December 20, 2023, the market value of offline retail assets held by Alibaba totaled $2 billion. Ali sold them one by one, probably not just for the "three returns". With more cash, Alibaba may improve its return on capital to shareholders, enhance its image in the capital market, and increase investor confidence, which is also a very important strategic appeal of Alibaba.