Alibaba (BABA) Falls on Heating Competition in China
Alibaba Group declined by 3.85 percent on Wednesday to end at $103.83 per share as investor sentiment was dampened by the cut-throat competition between the company and JD.com in servicing the expanding online market in China.
This followed JD.com's pledge on Wednesday to allocate some 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) to support so-called benchmark brands across various categories amid the growing daily orders in China, reaching a new high of over 200 million.
The plan reflected JD.com's efforts to dethrone Meituan as China's top on-demand local delivery services provider, while also fending off competition from Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA).
Earlier this month, Alibaba and Meituan went on a promotional war, flooding the market with discount coupons that allowed consumers to buy at unusually low prices.
An e-commerce platform displaying a wide range of products to customers online.
The program was said to have pushed delivery riders to work on extended hours to meet the surging demand.
Meanwhile, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) announced recently that it successfully raised HK$12 billion ($1.5 billion) through the issuance of a bond offer through 2032.
While we acknowledge the potential of BABA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the .
READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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Crypto is having a breakout summer — and bitcoin isn't the reason: Morning Brief
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Opportunity Zone tracts that could be in play across Los Angeles
Story Highlights New Opportunity Zone program reduces eligible areas by 26%. Governors must select zones by July 1, 2026. Intense lobbying is expected for limited Opportunity Zone designations. The second iteration of the federal Opportunity Zone program is expected to have fewer zones than its predecessor, potentially sparking intense lobbying efforts to determine which census tracts qualify for the high-stakes designation. The sweeping tax-and-spend legislation enacted last month — President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill — changed the criteria of the previous version of the Opportunity Zone program in a way that ultimately will shrink the number of eligible areas. The program by definition is intended to "spur economic growth and job creation in low-income communities while providing tax benefits to investors." GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events In the original program, passed during President Trump's first term as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, 42,176 census tracts were eligible to become designated Opportunity Zones. Ultimately, governors in each state and territory picked 8,764 of those locations to receive the tax-advantaged investments made possible by the program. In the new version of the Opportunity Zone program, Congress narrowed the definition of "low-income community" to census tracts with a median household income that does not exceed 70% of an area's median income, down from an 80% threshold previously. A census tract also would be eligible if it has a poverty rate above 20%. Congress also removed the ability of governors to nominate census tracts that would not otherwise be eligible but were allowed in the previous edition of the program because they were 'contiguous' to an eligible tract. 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'Look for polished census tract pitch decks, not only letters from governors' offices," Naig said in an email. "In Iowa, I can already see Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and who knows where else jockeying for a limited pool of urban tracts, while rural counties protest that they were forgotten last time and need a carve‑out.' Naig said there also are upsides to fewer Opportunity Zones. The changes should ensure that capital can go to truly distressed regions and not so-called 'tourist' areas as in the previous version of the program — places where no subsidy was truly needed to get developers to build. He also thinks states will devise clearer, more-transparent scoring rubrics, such as highlighting jobs or vacancy rates, to protect Opportunity Zone nominations from political blowback. He anticipates cities and states will pile on additional benefits such as facade grants, expedited permitting or special taxation zones, as well. 'States will codify what was previously ad hoc, and locals will create packages of incentives to sweeten tracts that appear scary on paper,' Naig said. Where Opportunity Zones could be located Some states will have many more eligible census tracts than others, according to The Business Journals' analysis. California tops all states in our estimate, with 2,738 census tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Texas with 2,492 and New York with 1,649. Vermont, on the other hand, has just 19 such census tracts, according to our estimate, followed by Wyoming with 29 and Arkansas with 30. At a more-local level, the most-populous counties are at the top of the list for eligible number of census tracts, according to The Business Journals' analysis. That means Los Angeles County, with 846 tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Chicago's Cook County, with 528. Harris County (Houston) in Texas has 526 eligible tracts, followed by New York's Kings County (Brooklyn) and Wayne County (Detroit) in Michigan. What will change for the program The new Opportunity Zone program calls for governors to identify their targeted sites by July 1, 2026, and for the program to officially open for investment on Jan. 1, 2027. That might seem like a lengthy timeline, but experts say business owners, landowners, investors and local-government officials should be taking action now — especially since the sun-up to designating new zones is likely to be a time of intense lobbying. Blake Christian, CEO at builder MIT Modular and an Opportunity Zone expert, said lobbying during the first round of the Opportunity Zone program was not pronounced because people were less aware of the full scope of the program and its potential. Governors ended up picking tracts that were already developed or were poorly suited to attract investment. Not this time, Christian said. 'Local lobbying has already begun, and with rural census tracts now more directly competing with urban areas, governors will be getting more public input than they may want,' Christian said. The original Opportunity Zones program saw about $89 billion in qualifying equity investments across 5,600 census tracts through the end of 2022, according to a working paper by the Economic Innovation Group — with expectations those investments will eventually total more than $100 billion. The group additionally noted that Opportunity Zones ultimately were responsible for a net increase of 313,000 housing units over a five-year period. Ahmed Whitt, director of the Center for Wealth Equity at Living Cities, said the new limitations on eligibility will likely discourage some real estate projects that contributed to the issues of gentrification and oversupply that plagued the program previously. 'We'll see more-intense lobbying, especially for select urban neighborhoods,' Whitt said. 'Still overall, the changes in 2.0 are likely to create a more-effective program by focusing on areas that truly need both investment and have growth potential.' Stay on top of the latest real estate news by signing up for The National Observer: Real Estate Edition.
