Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s biggest Internet company by sales, posted a 14 percent gain in third-quarter profit, missing analysts’ estimates, after increasing spending to develop new services.
Net income climbed to 2.45 billion yuan ($385 million) from 2.15 billion yuan a year earlier, Tencent said yesterday. Analysts expected 2.59 billion yuan, based on the average of eight estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 43 percent to 7.5 billion yuan.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Softbank Corp. are talking with private-equity funds about making a bid for all of Yahoo! Inc. without the company’s blessing, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Alibaba and Softbank, in an effort to buy back stakes owned by Yahoo, have grown impatient with a lack of progress in direct talks with the company, said the people, who asked not to be named because the negotiations are private.
China’s largest online retailers expect sales to as much as triple next year, setting off a rush for warehouse space that’s pushing up rents in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
“Everyone wants more warehouses,” Ji Wenhong, chief executive officer of luxury goods seller xiu.com, said in an interview. “Any warehouse bigger than 20,000 square meters will be leased the second it’s out on the market.”
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.-backed Yihaodian is looking for more space in anticipation of need. 360buy.com, China’s second largest e-commerce company by sales, plans to invest as much as 6 billion yuan ($943 million) over the next three years to build seven distribution centers as the Beijing-based company expects 2011 sales to triple from last year to 30 billion yuan.
Alibaba.com Ltd., the business-to- business marketplace operator owned by China’s biggest e- commerce company, plans to list its HiChina Group Ltd. domain- name service unit in the U.S.
Alibaba has submitted its proposal to the exchange, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange today. Details including the size, structure and price of the listing are yet to be decided, according to the statement.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China’s biggest online-commerce company, reorganized its Taobao retail unit into three companies to better meet customer demands, Chief Executive Jack Ma said.
The unit will be split into Taobao Mall for consumers to shop from businesses, eTao for shopping-related searches, and Taobao Marketplace for consumers to buy and sell goods from each other, Alibaba said in a statement today.
Reorganizing Taobao will create more value for shareholders and the group “won’t rule out the possibility” of going public in the future to reward workers and investors, Ma told employees in a letter today.
