Alibaba Group Holding is expected to sell its department store chain Intime Retail (Group) to Chinese clothing company Youngor Fashion, as the Chinese e-commerce giant moves away from offline retailing, people familiar with the matter said.
The two sides are expected to announce the deal this week, said a source, who declined to be named. Detailed terms of the deal remain unknown.
Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Younger, the textile and clothing company based in the eastern city of Ningbo, did not immediately respond to a similar request.
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If confirmed, Alibaba’s divestment would come seven years after it teamed up with Intime’s founder to take the mainland mall and department store chain private in a HK$19.8 billion (US$2.5 billion) all-cash deal.
A woman walks past an Intime Lotte department store in central Beijing, January 10, 2017. Photo: Reuters alt=A woman walks past an Intime Lotte department store in central Beijing, January 10, 2017. Photo: Reuters>
At the time, the deal was hailed as part of Alibaba’s “new retail” approach to combine online and offline operations. Before the privatization, Alibaba invested $692 million in Hong Kong-listed Intime as part of a series of business expansion initiatives undertaken by the group months before its September 2014 New York IPO.
Since last year, Alibaba has pivoted its sprawling e-commerce empire to refocus on core businesses, putting many non-core businesses up for sale. The company has reportedly been considering the sale of the department store chain since earlier this year.
The reported Intime sale is part of Alibaba’s broader efforts that began last March to restructure its business empire and refocus on its bread-and-butter e-commerce and cloud businesses, as the company grapples with macroeconomic headwinds and increased competition in the market.
Alibaba implemented a corporate restructuring in early 2023, dividing its business empire into six units.
In its latest revamp, Alibaba has merged its domestic and foreign e-commerce operations into one unit, continuing its efforts to seek greater synergy between its domestic and international supply chains under the leadership of Jiang Fan, who previously led the global e-commerce unit of the company. .
Alibaba is also considering divesting its stake in supermarket chain Sun Art Retail Group, owner of RT-Mart, which it took control of from France’s Mulliez family in 2020 for HK$28 billion.
Sun Art suspended trading in its Hong Kong-listed shares from late September to mid-October as negotiations were ongoing.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares fell 1.6 percent to HK$84.3 on Monday, while Youngor’s shares rose 5.7 percent in Shanghai.
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