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HONG KONG, Hong Kong — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China's biggest e-commerce company, fell for a fourth day in New York, extending a retreat from its November high as the peak shopping season ended and investors await quarterly results expected next month.
The shares slid 1.2 percent to $99.58, falling below $100 for the first time since October. JD.com Inc., China’s second- largest online shopping platform, and E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. also posted four-day declines. Online sports-lottery operator 500.com Ltd. retreated after surging 27 percent in the previous two days. The Bloomberg China-US Equity Index slid 0.8 percent.
Alibaba, which raised a record $25 billion in a Sept. 18 initial public offering, climbed to $119.15, its highest ever, on Nov. 10, a day before China’s annual Singles’ Day online shopping event when sales surged to $9.3 billion. Additional shares are expected to enter the market this year starting in March as lockup agreements preventing early investors from selling their stock expire.
“We have already passed the two biggest e-commerce holidays on Nov. 11 and Dec. 12, so in general people are viewing it as a time with limited catalysts,” Cheng Cheng, an analyst at Pacific Crest, said by phone from Portland, Oregon, Wednesday. “They’ll probably announce earnings in February, most likely before the lockup period time is up.”
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Alibaba, based in Hangzhou, offered shares at $68 each at its IPO. The 16 percent slump since the Nov. 10 high pared its gain from the IPO price to 46 percent.
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The company said in its IPO prospectus that 429 million shares being held under lockup agreements will become free to trade in March, accounting for about 17 percent of the outstanding stock, data compiled by Bloomberg show. An additional 1.6 billion shares, including those held by Yahoo! Inc., will be tradable in September.
“This is a good entry point,” Brad Gastwirth, Chief Executive Officer of ABR Investment Strategy LLC, said by phone from San Francisco Wednesday. “There’s nothing that has changed on their market positioning and competitiveness. We are still expecting good fourth-quarter numbers. ”
Alibaba is expected to post adjusted net income of $1.8 billion for the three months through December, according to the average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That would be a 35 percent increase from the same period in 2013.
JD.com slipped 0.1 percent to $23.82. Dangdang sank 1.3 percent to $8.97, the lowest in four weeks. 500.com slid 5.2 percent to $18.05.
The Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares ETF, the largest U.S. exchange-traded fund that tracks mainland Chinese stocks, slipped 0.7 percent to $36.09, extending a slump into a fifth day. The iShares China Large-Cap ETF, the largest Chinese ETF in the U.S. tracking Hong Kong shares, dropped 1.1 percent to $42.05.
By: Belinda Cao; editors: Nikolaj Gammeltoft and Richard Richtmyer
