Alibaba Absorbs Ele.me Escalating Retail War With Meituan And JD.com

The merger of its Ele.me service with its core e-commerce business marks a new stage in the e-commerce giant's three-way "on-demand retail wars" with Meituan and JD.com

Key Takeaways:

• Alibaba has shut down its money-losing local services segment, absorbing its Ele.me takeout dining service into its main e-commerce business group
• On-demand commerce has become the company's new mantra in its restructured e-commerce business as it shelves a previous breakup plan

When reports surfaced this week of an internal memo detailing yet another new restructuring at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA, investors cheered by bidding up the e-commerce giant's shares by nearly 4% over the next few days. The move marked the latest dismantling of a breakup plan announced by the company two years ago, throwing it squarely into China's growing "instant retail" wars that let consumers buy anything online and get it shipped to their homes within hours.

The original breakup plan in 2023 aimed to let Alibaba's six main units operate more independently to make them more efficient. But its strategy shifted just a year later as longtime CEO Daniel Zhang departed, with reports in January 2024 that it was considering sales of consumer assets under Eddy Wu, who became the company's new CEO in September 2023.

Both Zhang and Wu were trying to reverse a slide that saw Alibaba's shares lose about half their value over the last five years. Wu started by dumping some of Alibaba's brick-and-mortar retail assets, a relic of a "new retail" model that combined e-commerce and traditional retail, including its sale of its Intime department store chain and Sun Art grocery chain for about $3 billion combined.

Alibaba's latest financial results for its fiscal year through March were considered a disappointment despite a 6% increase in revenue for the year to 996.3 billion yuan ($139 billion) and non-GAAP net income that was flat at 158 billion yuan.

Its local services group, consisting of takeout dining service Ele.me and its Fliggy travel service, was also underwhelming. The segment's revenue rose 12% to 67 billion yuan for the fiscal year, and lost 3.7 billion yuan in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). The segment reported EBITDA losses in the three previous fiscal years as well, making it look like a candidate for another asset sale as the company returned to its e-commerce roots.

But instead, Alibaba has taken just the opposite tack by drawing Ele.me and Fliggy into its core e-commerce business, which includes the Taobao and Tmall marketplaces that are considered the company's crown jewels.

The move looks set to turn up the heat in China's recently intensifying instant retail wars. The addition of Ele.me to Alibaba's new e-commerce group could quickly turn up its fire power as the meal delivery company battles longtime rival Meituan (3690.HK) and newcomer JD.com (JD.US; 9168.HK) in the fiercely competitive market for on-demand or instant delivery services.

The battle is no longer just about takeout dining, which saw a huge upsurge during the pandemic and has become a part of everyday life in China. Now everyone wants everything on demand all the time, the faster the better. And companies are trying to deliver that. According to a report from the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, the country's instant retail delivery industry has grown by an average annual rate of more than 50% since 2018, to reach 650 billion yuan in 2023. 

Challenging Meituan and JD.com

Alibaba's new on-demand retail services are challenging Meituan, the traditional market leader, as well as JD.com, which was providing such services through its separately listed Dada Nexus arm that it recently privatized. Bargain e-commerce upstart PDD (PDD.US), operator of the Pinduoduo service, may also be trying to get in on the act.

Ele.me's future role as an important part of Alibaba's core e-commerce business has been obvious since at least April, when Taobao rebranded its one-hour delivery service, formerly known as Xiaoshida, as Taobao Instant Commerce. As part of that shift, it recruited Ele.me as its logistics provider, taking advantage of the service's 4 million riders. All of the company's instant retail operations were consolidated under Taobao, with Ele.me offering up its huge fleet of riders for both delivery of food and other products.

As part of the ramp-up, Taobao and Ele.me said they would offer over 10 billion yuan in subsidies to attract merchants and buyers to its new instant retail network. By early June, they had achieved over 40 million daily deliveries.

Alibaba made its move more than a year after JD.com, which launched its Miaosong, or "one second delivery," instant demand retail platform in May 2024, followed by a new food delivery service in February. In a research report in early June, HSBC noted that JD.com had achieved 25 million daily deliveries since it launched the food delivery service, advertising zero commission fees for restaurants that signed up before May 1.

In April, JD.com said it would hire 50,000 more full-time couriers for Miaosong, delivering items from its network of 100,000 JD.com-branded offline stores, and adding to its existing 1.2 million to 1.3 million active riders. The same month JD.com also privatized Dada Nexus, and has pledged 10 billion yuan in subsidies for its instant retail initiatives over the next year.

Also in April, Pinduoduo announced it would invest 100 billion yuan to transform and upgrade its platform for merchants, which many interpreted as showing it would enter the instant retail race.

Meituan, the takeout dining leader with 65% of the market, double Ele.me's 33%, rebranded its 7-year-old on-demand retail business in April as well. It positioned its "Meituan Flash Purchase" as a "new generation shopping platform that accompanies consumers 24 hours a day", selling everything from home appliances to pet supplies.

Meituan said on its latest earnings call last month that its delivery network was processing 20 million orders per day. According to CFO Chen Shaohui, non-catering orders were up 60% in the quarter.

Given the intense competition, heavy spending on subsidies and continued regulatory scrutiny, who will come out on top in the new instant retail era is anybody's guess. "We see quick commerce as a huge opportunity," said Alibaba's e-commerce chief Jiang Fan on the company's latest earnings call. "It addresses a widespread, everyday need for consumers across Chinese society. Today it could be a market of 500 to 600 million consumers. Going forward, that could easily become 1 billion consumers."

Alibaba seems to have a leg up over JD.com in the instant retail race, at least in investors' eyes, with a trailing price to earnings (P/E) ratio of 18 that's well ahead of JD.com's 11. But Meituan, known for its aggressive tactics and good execution, is the clear favorite with a P/E ratio of 61.

The analyst community likes all three companies, with 35 of 42 surveyed by Yahoo Finance giving Meituan a "buy" or "strong buy" rating. JD.com looks similar, with 34 out of 37 analysts rating it a "buy" or "strong buy," while 38 out of 40 give Alibaba those two ratings. That seems to show analysts aren't ready to call a winner in the building instant retail race just yet, and much will depend on how the landscape develops in the next few years.