Stars align for Alibaba with Tepper’s billion-dollar bet, de minimis exemption intact
Shares of Alibaba have been on a tear, up more than 6% on Monday and about 30% year to date. A few factors behind today’s rally and the broader ascent:
The “de minimis” exemption, which allows cheap imported goods from the likes of Alibaba and PDD Holdings (the parent company of Temu) to avoid duties, remains intact.
Trusted by Tepper: a filing from Appaloosa Management, the hedge fund run by billionaire David Tepper, showed that he added even more to the firm’s top holding in the fourth quarter.
AI signal and noise: BABA has a model that it says is better than OpenAI’s or DeepSeek’s. The stock has also gotten a bid from chatter that it would be taking a position in the fellow Hangzhou company (which management denied).
Valuation: BABA’s relatively cheap. Probably the best US megacap comparison is Amazon, and the valuation discrepancy is humungous. Alibaba’s forward price-to-earnings ratio is roughly 11.5x versus 32.2x, with an enterprise value to estimated EBITDA of ~6.9x versus 14.6x. Obviously, China’s not a shareholder-friendly jurisdiction (just look at a long-term chart of the MSCI China Index!), so there should be a reasonable valuation premium for American assets. But these premiums are well above their respective 10-year averages.
Alibaba is scheduled to report earnings on February 20.