Why Is Alibaba Stock Trading Lower Wednesday?

Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA stock is trading lower Wednesday amid reports of co-founder Jack Ma issuing an internal memo urging the company to change its direction fundamentally. 

Ma, who has been less involved in daily operations since 2020, unexpectedly responded to a staff post on Alibaba's internal forum. 

In his message, he praised the strategic decisions of rival PDD Holdings Inc PDD and expressed confidence in Alibaba's ability to "correct its course" amidst the emerging AI era for e-commerce, Bloomberg reports. 

This week, PDD reported third-quarter FY23 revenue growth of 94% year-on-year to $9.44 billion, beating the consensus of $7.69 billion.

The Chinese online retailer's adjusted earnings per ADS of RMB11.61 ($1.55), compared with RMB8.62 Y/Y, beating the consensus of $1.23.

Alibaba is facing challenges both internally and from the market, with competitors like PDD and ByteDance Ltd impacting its once-dominant e-commerce position. 

The company has seen significant internal changes, including a restructuring plan to break into six smaller units, the resignation of CEO Daniel Zhang, and the appointment of Joseph Tsai and Eddie Wu, both close associates of Ma. 

However, plans to spin off and list its $11 billion cloud arm were unexpectedly shelved, raising questions about Alibaba's future direction. 

Meanwhile, Alibaba struggled with its second cloud unit outage in a month. Several of Alibaba Cloud's database management products faced disruptions in regions including Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Virginia, U.S. this Monday.

Also this week, Alibaba closed its quantum computing research lab, part of the DAMO Academy.

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 2.25% at $73.02 premarket on the last check Wednesday.