Alibaba Group Holding, China’s biggest online retailer, slid for an eighth day, as fresh data highlighting China’s weakening economy stoked concern that the company’s sales growth is slowing.
The American depositary receipts retreated 0.4 per cent to $77.99 in New York, capping the longest slump since the company’s September debut. The drop pushed Alibaba’s decline from its high in November to 35 per cent. The Bloomberg China-US Equity Index fell 0.8 per cent to 118.52, a three-week low.
US-traded Chinese stocks followed a slump that pushed mainland shares to the lowest level in three weeks, as data showed that manufacturing trailed economists’ estimates. Traders have been withdrawing from China as its economy expands at the slowest pace in a quarter-century. Alibaba is scheduled to report its financial results for the three months that ended in June on 12 August.
“As they report next week, investors will be listening very carefully to the commentary Alibaba makes about the state of Chinese economy, and the state of the Chinese consumer, in particular,” Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, said by phone.
Alibaba sold ADRs for $68 apiece in a record $25-billion initial public offering on 18 September. They had climbed as much as 75 per cent in the following two months to a record high of $119.15 in November. The company will probably report a 34-per-cent increase in sales for the June quarter, down from 46 per cent in the same period last year, according to the average estimate of 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
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