7 ms·

Alibaba's Accounting Is as Alarming as Enron's

79 points by altstar 10y ago

woliveirajr 10y ago
Well, just because their accounts aren't as clear as expected it doesn't mean they will go down or that they aren't profitable
- benologist 10y ago
  The question posed in the article is how much is being stolen from investors via pouring money into 'other' businesses that Alibaba created externally and excludes from reports, citing their delivery operations as an example.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    "Stolen" might be a bit strong. They aren't being as open and they could and should, but investing is gambling, there are risks. The information that they weren't clearly showing all expenses is obviously there to be found, Chanos found it. People might feel cheated, but unless laws were broken, this is just a part of the market, and people need to keep that in mind when investing (or lobby for changes in the law).
    - benologist 10y ago
      It's possible every penny is well accounted for, but the person being interviewed doesn't seem to share that sentiment even pointing out that the original "Ali Baba" was a thief. The other investor quoted said Alibaba's paperwork looks "faked". They may have their own agendas, but Alibaba seems to be deliberately avoiding any legitimate transparency.
      - kbenson 10y ago
        Another way to state or interpret what I said in my prior comment is "Unless they actually have broken some laws, all they are doing is playing the game better than most the investors." If they are breaking the law, then they've defrauded investors. If they haven't, even if they've lied, all they've done is just found a new loophole, and investors should have been aware that what they were reading could have been a lie. it's not fair, but that's never been true about the market.
        benologist 10y ago
        The suspicion around this company's accounting practices seems to predate this article. We may find out the truth, and it might be nothing, if the SEC investigates. But that may be hampered by the Chinese government prohibiting audits by the US. http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-fund/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-f... http://fortune.com/2016/02/05/alibaba-stock-pay-disturbing/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/05/alibaba-stock-pay-disturbing/ http://www.barrons.com/articles/alibaba-digging-into-the-numbers-1455944344 http://www.barrons.com/articles/alibaba-digging-into-the-num...
    - tiatia 10y ago
      To use your analogy, if investing is "gambling" then investing in Chinese companies is gambling against a rigged system. Buyers beware.
      - huxley 10y ago
        Most gambling is against a rigged system, the house always wins in the long run.
        tiatia 10y ago
        This is not what I was talking about. The odds are the "known known". In case of Alibaba we have the known unknown.
    - smoyer 10y ago
      “What I like to remind people is that Alibaba was a thief,” Chanos says this in the last line of the article. I don't know if it's true, but we also know that Chanos isn't an unbiased reporter. He's shorting the company, so tearing them down is in his best interest.
  - PhantomGremlin 10y ago
    how much is being stolen from investors via pouring money into 'other' businesses that Alibaba created Another blatant example of this is what happened when Jack Ma, Chairman of Alibaba, moved control of Alipay away from Alibaba. I don't know all the details or the eventual outcome, but appears that people are deliberately trying to obscure what happened. I simply avoid investing in those sorts of companies. Check out these admittedly provocative headlines (the related questions) on the relationship: https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Does-Alibaba-and-Jack-Ma-still-owe-Yahoo-shareholders-for-taking-Alipay-now-worth-50-billion-out-of-Alibaba-wihtout-compensating-yahoo-despite-it-owning-40-of-alibaba https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Does-Alibaba-and-Jack-Ma-st...
- jonwachob91 10y ago
  >“My experience with Chinese companies is that what you don’t know is generally not good news"
- x0x0 10y ago
  There's a difference between lack of clarity and fraud. Bronte Capital discussed Single's Day, Alibaba / China's equivalent of black Friday. Taking Alibaba's claim of 278m package deliveries at face value, he compares the scale of infrastructure and employees required for Amazon plus Amazon Logistics/UPS/Fedex to deliver significantly fewer packages than Alibaba's claim to Alibaba's infrastructure/employees. The conclusion appears to be that what Alibaba is claiming is largely impossible and the numbers are very wonky. http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/09/job-interview-questions-size-and-scope.html http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/09/job-interview-ques...
wnevets 10y ago
>“What the company is really earning we don’t know,” says Chanos. “My experience with Chinese companies is that what you don’t know is generally not good news" Makes sense to me, if it was good news why wouldn't they tell you?
- hbcondo714 10y ago
  I don't think it's fair of the author to single out Chinese companies. Any company based outside the US that trades on a public US stock exchange (ADRs) files in a different fashion than US-based companies including requirements disclosed and timing of the filing[1] [1] https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/internatl/foreign-private-issuers-overview.shtml#IIIB1a https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/internatl/foreign-priv...
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I didn't find a lot of substance in this article, the message was basically "Alibaba's accounting practice is opaque, so we don't know where the money is." the reminder that in Arabian nights Alibaba was a thief seems to tie up the narrative nicely. Not that I'm buying it. That said, it is tremendously important to Yahoo! that they understand the real value of Alibaba. No doubt it would be tremendously useful to have transparency on where all the money is coming from and where it is going, presumably these people use a recognized accounting firm to provide audited results for people who want to know?
- peloton 10y ago
  There isn't a lot of substance but the Enron comparison is awfully loaded. The article specifically calls out the use of off balance sheet entities to hide costs-- for people who follow this stuff, that immediately triggers memories of Enron's use of special purpose entities and Lehman's Repo 105 off balance sheet shenanigans.
- tiatia 10y ago
  Chinese culture is not honest. The idea of "shareholder value" must sound disturbing for them. Now Alibaba. Amazon and Ebay on Steroids. Maybe. Or not so much? Parts of the company are removed/divested from the stock. This is very likely not a good thing. In case of Alipay (Think Paypal) it is not a good thing because investors lose a very valuable asset. In case of the delivery services, it is not a good thing because likely this is a money losing business, making look Alibaba much more profitable than it is. “My experience with Chinese companies is that what you don’t know is generally not good news.” I agree on that. I live in China and I don't own any Chinese stocks. You may take all this already into consideration when investing into Alibaba. Not to the linked previous article from Bronte capital (their blog is actually in my RSS feed and very good): http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-fund/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-f... He has a look on some reported numbers from Alibaba. And while mathematically possible, I would again take them into carefully consideration of your investment. I use Alibaba. Its good. Most of the stuff is fake but they have good and cheap things. But knowing the Chinese and seeing this red herrings, I would pass. Here is another Blog post about another Alibaba competitor (competitor to Alibabas TMart) JD that speaks very positively about the competitor: https://oraclefromomaha.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/jd-com-a-multi-decade-compounder/ https://oraclefromomaha.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/jd-com-a-mu... But in the end, both are Chinese companies.
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
> John Chanos, president of Kynikos Associates, Spotted the professional cynic. (Brilliant, making money out of it. The forerunner was famously dirt, live-in-a-barrel, poor. But with the balls to ask Alexander to "stand a little out of my sun.")
doctorpangloss 10y ago
What is more likely: that Alibaba is making up its numbers, or that Yahoo has actually made one good investment in the last six years? Ponder that thought for a bit. I don't know if you actually need to open up an accounting book to know something's fishy :)
trevelyan 10y ago
Malls in China are starting to hollow-out because people are buying almost everything online. Increasingly, you go to malls for the expensive stuff that can be easily faked as well as for restaurants. So if Alibaba isn't recording a lot of profit, that's because it's engineering ways to put money in useful places, not because it doesn't have customers.

79 points by altstar 10y ago

Well, just because their accounts aren't as clear as expected it doesn't mean they will go down or that they aren't profitable

benologist 10y ago
The question posed in the article is how much is being stolen from investors via pouring money into 'other' businesses that Alibaba created externally and excludes from reports, citing their delivery operations as an example.
- kbenson 10y ago
  "Stolen" might be a bit strong. They aren't being as open and they could and should, but investing is gambling, there are risks. The information that they weren't clearly showing all expenses is obviously there to be found, Chanos found it. People might feel cheated, but unless laws were broken, this is just a part of the market, and people need to keep that in mind when investing (or lobby for changes in the law).
  - benologist 10y ago
    It's possible every penny is well accounted for, but the person being interviewed doesn't seem to share that sentiment even pointing out that the original "Ali Baba" was a thief. The other investor quoted said Alibaba's paperwork looks "faked". They may have their own agendas, but Alibaba seems to be deliberately avoiding any legitimate transparency.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      Another way to state or interpret what I said in my prior comment is "Unless they actually have broken some laws, all they are doing is playing the game better than most the investors." If they are breaking the law, then they've defrauded investors. If they haven't, even if they've lied, all they've done is just found a new loophole, and investors should have been aware that what they were reading could have been a lie. it's not fair, but that's never been true about the market.
      - benologist 10y ago
        The suspicion around this company's accounting practices seems to predate this article. We may find out the truth, and it might be nothing, if the SEC investigates. But that may be hampered by the Chinese government prohibiting audits by the US. http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-fund/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-f... http://fortune.com/2016/02/05/alibaba-stock-pay-disturbing/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/05/alibaba-stock-pay-disturbing/ http://www.barrons.com/articles/alibaba-digging-into-the-numbers-1455944344 http://www.barrons.com/articles/alibaba-digging-into-the-num...
  - tiatia 10y ago
    To use your analogy, if investing is "gambling" then investing in Chinese companies is gambling against a rigged system. Buyers beware.
    - huxley 10y ago
      Most gambling is against a rigged system, the house always wins in the long run.
      - tiatia 10y ago
        This is not what I was talking about. The odds are the "known known". In case of Alibaba we have the known unknown.
  - smoyer 10y ago
    “What I like to remind people is that Alibaba was a thief,” Chanos says this in the last line of the article. I don't know if it's true, but we also know that Chanos isn't an unbiased reporter. He's shorting the company, so tearing them down is in his best interest.
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  how much is being stolen from investors via pouring money into 'other' businesses that Alibaba created Another blatant example of this is what happened when Jack Ma, Chairman of Alibaba, moved control of Alipay away from Alibaba. I don't know all the details or the eventual outcome, but appears that people are deliberately trying to obscure what happened. I simply avoid investing in those sorts of companies. Check out these admittedly provocative headlines (the related questions) on the relationship: https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Does-Alibaba-and-Jack-Ma-still-owe-Yahoo-shareholders-for-taking-Alipay-now-worth-50-billion-out-of-Alibaba-wihtout-compensating-yahoo-despite-it-owning-40-of-alibaba https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Does-Alibaba-and-Jack-Ma-st...
jonwachob91 10y ago
>“My experience with Chinese companies is that what you don’t know is generally not good news"
x0x0 10y ago
There's a difference between lack of clarity and fraud. Bronte Capital discussed Single's Day, Alibaba / China's equivalent of black Friday. Taking Alibaba's claim of 278m package deliveries at face value, he compares the scale of infrastructure and employees required for Amazon plus Amazon Logistics/UPS/Fedex to deliver significantly fewer packages than Alibaba's claim to Alibaba's infrastructure/employees. The conclusion appears to be that what Alibaba is claiming is largely impossible and the numbers are very wonky. http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/09/job-interview-questions-size-and-scope.html http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/09/job-interview-ques...

wnevets 10y ago

>“What the company is really earning we don’t know,” says Chanos. “My experience with Chinese companies is that what you don’t know is generally not good news" Makes sense to me, if it was good news why wouldn't they tell you?

hbcondo714 10y ago
I don't think it's fair of the author to single out Chinese companies. Any company based outside the US that trades on a public US stock exchange (ADRs) files in a different fashion than US-based companies including requirements disclosed and timing of the filing[1] [1] https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/internatl/foreign-private-issuers-overview.shtml#IIIB1a https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/internatl/foreign-priv...

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I didn't find a lot of substance in this article, the message was basically "Alibaba's accounting practice is opaque, so we don't know where the money is." the reminder that in Arabian nights Alibaba was a thief seems to tie up the narrative nicely. Not that I'm buying it. That said, it is tremendously important to Yahoo! that they understand the real value of Alibaba. No doubt it would be tremendously useful to have transparency on where all the money is coming from and where it is going, presumably these people use a recognized accounting firm to provide audited results for people who want to know?

peloton 10y ago
There isn't a lot of substance but the Enron comparison is awfully loaded. The article specifically calls out the use of off balance sheet entities to hide costs-- for people who follow this stuff, that immediately triggers memories of Enron's use of special purpose entities and Lehman's Repo 105 off balance sheet shenanigans.
tiatia 10y ago
Chinese culture is not honest. The idea of "shareholder value" must sound disturbing for them. Now Alibaba. Amazon and Ebay on Steroids. Maybe. Or not so much? Parts of the company are removed/divested from the stock. This is very likely not a good thing. In case of Alipay (Think Paypal) it is not a good thing because investors lose a very valuable asset. In case of the delivery services, it is not a good thing because likely this is a money losing business, making look Alibaba much more profitable than it is. “My experience with Chinese companies is that what you don’t know is generally not good news.” I agree on that. I live in China and I don't own any Chinese stocks. You may take all this already into consideration when investing into Alibaba. Not to the linked previous article from Bronte capital (their blog is actually in my RSS feed and very good): http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-fund/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/18/alibaba-faking-numbers-hedge-f... He has a look on some reported numbers from Alibaba. And while mathematically possible, I would again take them into carefully consideration of your investment. I use Alibaba. Its good. Most of the stuff is fake but they have good and cheap things. But knowing the Chinese and seeing this red herrings, I would pass. Here is another Blog post about another Alibaba competitor (competitor to Alibabas TMart) JD that speaks very positively about the competitor: https://oraclefromomaha.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/jd-com-a-multi-decade-compounder/ https://oraclefromomaha.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/jd-com-a-mu... But in the end, both are Chinese companies.

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago

> John Chanos, president of Kynikos Associates, Spotted the professional cynic. (Brilliant, making money out of it. The forerunner was famously dirt, live-in-a-barrel, poor. But with the balls to ask Alexander to "stand a little out of my sun.")

doctorpangloss 10y ago

What is more likely: that Alibaba is making up its numbers, or that Yahoo has actually made one good investment in the last six years? Ponder that thought for a bit. I don't know if you actually need to open up an accounting book to know something's fishy :)

trevelyan 10y ago

Malls in China are starting to hollow-out because people are buying almost everything online. Increasingly, you go to malls for the expensive stuff that can be easily faked as well as for restaurants. So if Alibaba isn't recording a lot of profit, that's because it's engineering ways to put money in useful places, not because it doesn't have customers.