Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s (NYSE:BABA) Chief Talent Officer and partner, Jiang Fang, stated on the company’s intranet that the timing of Jack Ma’s trust selling 10 million shares was purely coincidental. This statement came as Alibaba also chose to cancel the listing of its cloud unit on the very same day.
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According to this post accessed by Reuters, it stated that earlier this year, Ma’s trust had “made a plan to sell some shares to reinvest in agriculture and public welfare projects.” Under U.S. securities rules, they were required to disclose it by mid-November.
Jiang commented, “November 16 happened to be the disclosure time set, but the stockbrokers did not know that this day was the day when the company was set to release its financial report.” The coincidence of these two events had given rise to investor concerns about Ma’s commitment to the company.
The company had announced that it was halting the spin-off of its Cloud Intelligence business when it announced its calendar Q3 results. The firm had stated that it was making this decision due to the adverse impact on its Cloud unit due to the restrictions placed by the U.S. on semiconductor manufacturing equipment and computing chips.
Is BABA a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Overall, analysts are bullish about BABA stock, with a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 19 Buys and one Hold. Year-to-date, BABA has slid by more than 14% and the average BABA price target of $126.32 implies an upside potential of 60.2% at current levels.
