On this annual shopping festival, we could see how Chinese consumers are growing their spending.
Alibaba’s Tmall reached 10 billion yuan in less than two minutes (00:01:36)
With updated info: Alibaba singles day sales GMV stood at 268.4 billion yuan (~$38 billion), growing 26% from last year.
Dots to connect: competitions from JD and Pinduoduo?, growth okay, houses being sold on platforms, live steaming as a new type of sales & marketing but costs?
It is an interesting story to watch as LVMH became the second-most valuable company in Europe
The current Meituan (MeituanDianping) came from a merger between Meituan and Dianping in December 2015.
Once a company invested by Alibaba, Meituan has become more closer with Tencent after the merger.
At the beginning of 2016, MeituanDianping raised $3.3 billion from Tencent, DST Global and Temasek at a $15 billion pre-money valuation; meanwhile, Alibaba sold its stake for ~$900 million in the same month.
Later that year, in April 2016, Alibaba invested the $900 million in Ele.me and Ant Financial invested $350 million.
The war has already changed from Yelp and Groupon to more comprehensive areas – restaurants and other local services.
[Note – in 2014, Priceline (now Booking.com) agreed to buy restaurant booking service OpenTable for about $2.6 billion in cash. But in China, dining is not exactly scheduled by time but by getting a number into the line, determined by how many people are ahead of you.]
However, US and China are similar in the world of food delivery. Meituan and Ele.me are fighting in China while Uber Eats, DoorDash, GrubHub, PostMates are fighting in the US. The difference – China uses e-bikes and US uses cars.
And for other services like movies, Meituan spun-off Maoyan in 2016. Maoyan is competing with Tao Piaopiao, which raised ¥1.7 billion in 2016.
In the US, the market is led by Fandango and Atom Tickets. But the market is not limited to movies – it’s about all kinds of shows, concerts and exhibitions.
Meituan is also offering hotel & travel bookings, fighting in the war with Ctrip.
Going back to Meituan, it raised $4 billion in October 2017 from Tencent, Sequoia, GIC and Tiger Global.
Meituan Dianping introduced its ride-hailing operation Meituan Dache in February 2018.
In April 2018, Alibaba acquired Ele.me for $9.5 billion.
Same week , Meituan acquired mobike for $2.7 billion.
Later that month, Ant Financials led a round of $700 million for Hellobike.
Meituan went for IPO in Hong Kong in September 2018, raising $4.2 billion.
Another OTA, Tongcheng-Elong, with Tencent and Ctrip as major shareholders, went IPO in Hong Kong in November 2018, raising $180 million.
Summing up the wars Meituan is in:
SoftBank Group’s presentation gives a fairly good illustration of what the group is holding, the loss on book due to WeWork and the turnaround plan for it.
The presentation talks a lot about WeWork, but it’s Alibaba that contributes/matters the most right now. Nearly half of ($123 billion out of the $256 billion) its equity values of holding comes from Alibaba.
And given SoftBank Group’s market cap ~$80 billion now, it is a very good source of Alibaba exposure even without hedge (personally I think other holdings are also okay).
The turnaround plan relies a lot on higher occupancy rates and cost cuttings as WeWork manage the properties longer.
Here is the presentation.
In the last post, we look at the city coverage by three carriers.
Here is another comparison of the plans they provide, in terms of price and data.
Before looking at the table, another data point is useful – in September 2019, an average user consumed 8.39GB in data, up ~60% from 5.14GB September 2018, which grew ~2.6x from ~2GB in September 2017.
China Mobile’s plan has two version Personal & Family (the latter includes fixed broadband services).
There is not much difference between carriers, except that –
| Data Plan (GB) | China Mobile | China Unicom | China Telecom | avg. costs per GB | Speed |
| 30 | 128 | 129 | 129 | 4.3 |
500 Mbps
|
| 40 | 159 | 169 | 4.1 | ||
| 60 | 198 | 199 | 199 | 3.3 | |
| 80 | 239 | 239 | 3.0 |
1 Gbps
|
|
| 100 | 298 | 299 | 299 | 3.0 | |
| 150 | 398 | 399 | 399 | 2.7 | |
| 300 | 598 | 599 | 599 | 2.0 |
On the last day of October, three carriers in China unveiled their 5G plans and supported cities to the public.
Each carriers covers 50 cities. And doing a simple coverage overlap check, we could find 44 cities having three operators, 4 cities having two and 10 cities having one.
In total, 57 cities are covered with 5G plan(s).
Here are 45 cities with coverage by three carriers:
3 cities covered by two carriers:
9 cities covered by one carrier:
In another post weeks before, I wrote how Uber Card can beat Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR) in many ways.
But things change fast.
Two of my favorite perks are removed/reduced in this new Uber Credit Card – $50 annul credit in subscription is removed (a huge drop in NPV when comparing with other cards), and 4% dining is changed to 3% (a 25% reduction!)
Uber is definitely trying to save some costs and increase cardholder’s usage of Uber here. There will be no cash back – rewards are redeemed in the form of Uber Cash.
After the changes, Uber Credit Card will earn 5% on Uber related purchases (like Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card has 5% on amazon purchases). So when comparing costs of Lyft and Uber, technically you need to do a 5% adjustment to see which is better (too much of a hassle!).
The changes are coming for February 2020 billing period according to the email I received.
The new card design looks better tho.
Tesla announced on Weibo that customers can now book their Model 3 China version online or in store.
Prices start at ¥355,800. The first delivery will be in 2020 Q1. Before the Shanghai version, Tesla Model 3 was sold in China for more than ¥439,900.
Customers need to put a deposit of ¥20,000, which can be paid in AliPay or WeChat.
The pickup availability is shown below.
Three models of Model 3 will be sold in China.
MGM Resorts International is putting the Bellagio into a joint venture controlled by a Blackstone Group Inc real-estate investment trust. MGM is to hold a 5% stake in the venture and $4.2 billion cash and will continue to operate the hotel and casino, which it will rent from the venture for $245 million a year. The transaction values Bellagio at $4.25 billion, the company said. [WSJ]
MGM said it is separately selling another Strip casino, Circus Circus, to an associate of Phil Ruffin, who owns Treasure Island in Las Vegas, for $825 million.
Japan’s move last year to legalize gambling opened the way for global casino operators to pursue licenses there.
MGM Resorts has adopted what it calls its “Osaka-first” strategy, pouring its efforts into securing a license in that city.
MGM could also look to wring some value from its 50 percent interest in mixed-use complex CityCenter, as well its 68 percent stake in MGM Growth Properties (NYSE:MGP). [casino.org]
The company stated its intention to reduce domestic net debt/EBITDA (on a restricted group basis) to about 1.0x – Moody’s
Crunchbase News, first published on March 13, 2017, is part of Crunchbase.
Verizon retains an ownership stake in the company. [Crunchbase News – About]
Investors in Crunchbase also include:
The company raised $18 million of Series B venture funding from lead investor Mayfield on April 6, 2017, putting the company’s pre-money valuation at $52 million.
Acquired by Morningstar (NASDAQ: MORN) for $225 million on December 1, 2016. Deal announced in October.
Morningstar was an early investor in PitchBook and owned approximately 20 percent of the company before acquisition.
At that time, PitchBook had $31.1 million in revenue for the trailing 12 months ended June 30, 2016. The company has more than 300 employees located in Seattle, New York, and London.
Raised $10 million of Series A venture funding from Pilot Growth Equity on November 9, 2015, putting the company’s pre-money valuation at $40 million.
