TCL's valuation envy, JD.com looks back on Dangdang
Internet executives were busy quashing a number of rumors on their microblogs this week, with smartphone sensation Xiaomi trying to stamp out reports of bitter relations with SNS giant Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), and e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) quashing talk of a major new investment in South Korea. But some of the more interesting chatter focused on the concept of company valuations, and just how widely such valuations can vary for China's dynamic tech firms.
At the same time, a coming flurry of year-end parties began to kick off in the run-up to the Chinese New Year holiday that's just a month away. The microblogging realm saw e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) singing its own praises at the company's annual party, taking a shot at fast-fading rival Dangdang (NYSE: DANG) in the process. At around the same time, a stumbling Sina Weibo (Nasdaq: WB) also held an annual awards ceremony for notable microbloggers, in its own attempt to remain relevant in the social networking realm.
The tone was more upbeat in the chatter coming from JD.com, China's second largest e-commerce company, which was celebrating a banner year with its own year-end party. JD got a lofty valuation when it went public in the US last year, and is now worth about US$33 billion, even though it's still losing money. That reality was almost certainly on the mind of JD's public relations chief Yan Yuelong, who used the celebratory occasion to take a shot at rival Dangdang, which was one of China's earliest e-commerce sites.
Finally there was Sina Weibo, which was once China's dominant social networking company but has been rapidly overtaken by Tencent's WeChat and other more mobile-friendly apps like Momo (Nasdaq: MOMO) in the last two years. Sina Weibo is still a major player in the space, though its market value looks rather modest at just $2.6 billion. It was trying to show its continued relevance on the Chinese Internet with a year-end ceremony where it gave awards to some of the year's most influential microbloggers.
Instead, the more revealing detail was the lack of any other major tech names on the list, and only Yang really qualities as an A-list tech executive. People who do business in China know that companies often pay to win such awards, and executives are only honored if they agree to come to pick up their awards. While many tech executives still have their own Weibo accounts, I suspect that most declined to put their names in contention for these new awards. That reflects the very real fact that Weibo's attraction and influence are rapidly fading, as more web surfers flock to different services like WeChat.