Alibaba Breaks Singles Day Sales Record Amid Massive Stock Plunge
Alibaba achieves a record $56.42 billion in Singles Day sales but suffers a nearly 10% stock drop due to new Chinese antitrust regulations.
Alibaba sets a new sales record for its annual Singles Day shopping event, generating over 372.3 billion yuan ($56.42 billion) in gross merchandise value. This year, the event runs from November 1 to November 12 instead of the typical 24-hour window, allowing the company to easily surpass last year's 268.4 billion yuan total. Rival JD.com also reports a massive 200 billion yuan in transaction volume during the same extended period.
Despite these massive sales figures, Alibaba's stock drops nearly 10% and wipes out over $60 billion in market value. JD.com experiences a similar decline, with its Hong Kong shares falling 9.2%. The steep stock plunges for both tech giants directly result from newly proposed antitrust regulations from the Chinese government.
China's State Administration for Market Regulation releases draft rules that define anti-competitive behavior for the first time. The proposed regulations target key e-commerce practices such as pricing strategies, payment methods, and the use of data to target shoppers. These regulatory changes cast a long shadow over the record-breaking e-commerce celebrations.