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Cohen is pushing for Alibaba to expand its share-repurchase plan by $20 billion, to roughly $60 billion, the WSJ reported.
Qilai Shen / Bloomberg
Investor Ryan Cohen, who has found fame with activist campaigns at meme stocks such as
GameStop
and
Bed Bath & Beyond
,
is now targeting Chinese e-commerce giant
Ali Dad
.
The billionaire co-founder of
chewy
and chairman of
GameStop
(ticker: GME) has built up a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars in
Ali Dad
(BABA) in the second half of last year and is pushing for the company to increase its stock buybacks, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. A person familiar with the matter has confirmed the Journal’s report to barron’s.
Launching a campaign at a company as large as Alibaba, which has a market capitalization of more than $300 billion, is a departure from Cohen’s other activist ventures which have focused on smaller US companies.
Alibaba stock was up 0.3% in premarket trading.
Cohen’s army of retail-investor fans seem less likely to follow him into an investment in a major Chinese company with little prospect of the kind of ‘short-squeeze’ dynamics that produced sharp rallies in GameStop stock, especially after Cohen’s surprise sale of his stake of
Bed Bath & Beyond
(BBB).
However, Cohen could be positioned to benefit from the rebound in Chinese technology stocks due to a perceived relaxation of Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on the sector and any further stock buyback plans implemented by Alibaba. Cohen is pushing for the company to expand its share-repurchase plan by $20 billion, to roughly $60 billion, the WSJ reported.
Alibaba didn’t immediately respond to a barron’s request for comment early on Tuesday.
Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com
.