Alibaba and Tencent Face End of an Era as Sales Start to Shrink
- Both are expected to post their first revenue declines
- China is facing a consumer and economic crisis of faith
People walk past the mascot for the Taobao e-commerce platform at the Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou, China.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
For almost a decade, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. embodied China’s economic miracle, sustaining a dizzying pace of growth and approaching trillion-dollar valuations with splashy forays into every corner of the internet.
That spectacular run could officially end Thursday, when the e-commerce powerhouse that Jack Ma founded is expected to record its first-ever decline in quarterly revenue -- one of the few major Chinese internet corporations to do so, ever. Fellow billionaire Pony Ma’s Tencent, the social media powerhouse, could follow suit days later.