What's Going On With Alibaba Stock Friday?

In recent developments, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA has faced a significant downturn in its stock value.

This decline, marking a 77% drop from its 2020 peak, results from various challenges, including sluggish domestic sales, stiff competition, and uncertainty following leadership and business strategy changes. 

Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed stock is now valued at only 7.6 times the estimated earnings for the next 12 months, considerably lower than its main rival, Tencent Holdings Ltd TCEHY, and even traditional companies like CLP, Bloomberg reports.

Despite these challenges in its core e-commerce business, Alibaba continues to innovate in other areas. 

Notably, its workplace communication platform DingTalk achieved a milestone of 700 million users by the end of 2023. 

Under the leadership of President Ye Jun, DingTalk unveiled an AI agent powered by Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen. 

This AI agent is designed to boost productivity by performing various tasks, from generating document summaries to handling business trip bookings. 

It allows customization to suit the specific needs of both individual and enterprise users, the Alizila reports.

Furthermore, DingTalk’s corporate user base has expanded to 25 million, with daily active paid users reaching 28 million. 

The platform is pioneering the use of generative AI in Alibaba’s ecosystem, with the capability to create personal and corporate AI agents for various tasks. DingTalk plans to launch a marketplace for AI agents, expecting significant growth in this area.

Alibaba had an eventful week with its central e-commerce unit Taobao and Tmall Group (TTG) beta testing new AI tools for merchants on its Chinese online shopping platforms. 

This development, the first major initiative since a leadership change in December, focuses on enhancing seller-consumer interactions using upgraded AI models in customer service chatbots. 

Under new CEO Eddie Wu Yongming, TTG is also introducing a new rating system and policies to improve consumer services. Additionally, Alibaba’s logistics arm, Cainiao, is innovating with a new service in the U.S. to consolidate multiple purchases, aiming to reduce delivery times. 

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 0.41% at $72.08 premarket on the last check Friday.

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

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