Alibaba Takes Weibo Stake From Sina.com

Chinese B2B e-commerce company Alibaba Group has inked a deal with Chinese Web portal Sina.com for a wide range of cooperation.

The two companies will cooperate in the areas of user account connectivity, data exchange, online payment and online marketing, and will explore new business models for social commerce based on the interactions of the hundreds of millions of users on Sina’s microblog service Weibo and on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms.

The strategic alliance is expected to generate approximately USD380 million in advertising and social commerce services revenues in aggregate for Weibo over the next three years.

Alibaba, through a wholly owned subsidiary, has also invested USD586 million to purchase preferred and ordinary shares representing approximately 18% of Weibo on a fully-diluted basis. Sina has also granted an option to Alibaba to enable Alibaba to increase its ownership in Weibo to 30% on a fully-diluted basis at a mutually agreed valuation within a certain period of time in the future.