Alibaba's SoftBank Monetization Impact Minimized By Buyback, Trust Structure

SoftBank Group Corp recently announced its plans to to sell a part of its 32.2 percent stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA. Apparently, the Chinese e-commerce company plans to buy back $2 billion of its own stock from Softbank, which intends to dispose of at least $7.9 billion in stock, in an effort to trim its debt. It should be noted that an additional $400 million in stock will be sold to members of the Alibaba Partnership.

In a report issued Wednesday, SunTrust’s Bob Peck and his team explained why they believe the impact of the SoftBank monetization will be minimized by Alibaba’s share buyback and SoftBank's own trust structure, which was interpreted as “a vote of confidence on Alibaba's outlook,” given than the Japanese company will retains 28 percent ownership in the Chinese firm, and board seat.

Having said this, however, Peck and his teammates pointed out that they think the market is still concerned with the potential impact of SoftBank and Yahoo! Inc. YHOO’s stakes in Alibaba (of 28 percent and 15 percent, respectively) “eventually coming to market as well as the Yahoo core sale in-process and the fate of Yahoo / Yahoo Japan / SoftBank / Alibaba cross holdings.”

SunTrust maintains a Buy rating on shares of Alibaba.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.