Alibaba Dumps $317M Worth Of XPeng Stock: Cash Grab Or EV Exit Looming?

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA has reportedly sold a significant portion of its stake in EV manufacturer XPeng Inc. XPEV, raking in $317 million.

What Happened: The sale involved approximately 33 million U.S.-traded shares of XPeng, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The shares were priced at $9.60 each by Alibaba’s subsidiary, Taobao China Holding Ltd., representing a 2.9% discount to XPeng’s Tuesday closing price of $9.89. Taobao purchased the shares in September 2019 as a pre-IPO investment into the EV maker.

This sale follows a similar move in December when Alibaba sold 25 million of XPeng’s shares. Despite the sale, XPeng has maintained its collaboration with Alibaba in various areas such as research and development and marketing services.

XPeng Financials: Earlier this week, XPeng reported a fourth-quarter sales growth of 153.9% year-on-year, to 13.05 billion yuan ($1.81 billion). Adjusted net loss per ADS was reported as $0.28, beating the consensus loss of $0.46.

Vehicle deliveries jumped a whopping 170.9% during the quarter to 60,158.

For the first quarter, XPeng expects vehicle deliveries of 21,000 – 22,500, up 15.2% – 23.4% year-on-year. The company further expects revenue of 5.8 billion yuan –6.2 billion yuan for the quarter, representing a year-on-year increase of 43.8% – 53.7%.

Price Action: ADR shares of XPeng closed down 3.84% on Wednesday at $9.51. The stock is down 58.3% since listing on the NASDAQ in August 2020, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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