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Share sales net rich pickings

By Wang Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-17 08:07

Jack Ma and Ma Huateng not only share the same family name but they also have the distinction of founding two of China's most prominent Internet firms.

Now, they have something else in common as well: Both recently sold shares in their own companies.

Jack Ma, president of Alibaba.com, China's largest e-commerce firm, announced last week that he had raised about HK$270 million by selling 13 million of his shares in the company. That accounted for less than 5 percent of his total direct and indirect holdings in the company, according to Alibaba.com.

The announcement came around the same time that Ma Huateng, president of China's largest Internet conglomerate Tencent Holdings, announced he had sold 500,000 shares in Tencent for about HK$64.4 million. Tencent said Ma's holdings in the company fell from 11.59 percent to 11.56 percent after the share sale.

Although neither of the entrepreneurs disclosed details of their share sales, Jack Ma said in a letter to Alibaba's employees that he had sold the shares to give himself and his family "a little sense of accomplishment" as Alibaba Group, which Ma established 10 years ago, was nearing the end of its first stage of development.

He did not intend to sell any more shares in the company, a Wall Street Journal report quoted him as saying.

The share sales have come at a time when the share prices of Alibaba and Tencent have been close to their highest for the year so far. Alibaba's shares rose from HK$5.99 in January to more than HK$20 this week, while the share price of Tencent also surged from HK$69.66 in April to HK$125.70 this week.

Li Zhizhong, an analyst with Ping An Securities who tracks both Alibaba and Tencent, said executives of listed companies dispose of their shares largely for one or more of three reasons: Lack of confidence in the company; a need to diversify their investment portfolios and key personal investments such as the purchase of real estate. Li said he believed Jack Ma or Ma Huateng's share sales were not due to lack of faith in their companies' growth prospects.

"In the long term, Tencent and Alibaba still have huge potential for growth," said Li, recommending that investors should hold on to Tencent shares as their value was likely to exceed HK$200 in the next two to three years.

Although most investors in both companies have not been upset by the share disposal, Yahoo! Inc, the US search engine, said on Monday that it was selling its stake in Alibaba.com for as much as HK$1.17 billion. Even so, the company still holds a 40 percent stake in Alibaba Group, the parent of Alibaba.com, which controls about 74 percent of Alibaba.com.

An analyst from a domestic securities firm said relations between Yahoo! and Alibaba had soured in recent years as China Yahoo's share in the Chinese search market had declined from 21 percent four years ago to 6 percent by the second quarter of this year, according to domestic research firm Analysys International.

Alibaba Group announced last month that it would separate Koubei.com, a classified-listings website, from China Yahoo and inject Koubei into its rapidly expanding online auction website Taobao.com.

The analyst, who declined to be named, said he thought Yahoo! might be looking to sell all of its shares in Alibaba.