China's Alibaba Considers Selling Department Store Chain Intime After 7 Years of Ownership

China's largest e-commerce company Alibaba is reportedly considering selling the department store chain Intime. This marks the first time in seven years since acquiring it in 2017 as part of strengthening its offline business that the company is putting it back on the market.

On the 1st (local time), Bloomberg News, citing sources, reported that Alibaba is considering the sale of Intime, suggesting that "after extensive restructuring, Alibaba is reconsidering its years-long ambition to dominate both offline and online retail businesses."

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

Intime is considered Alibaba's largest investment made in 2017 to reorganize its retail business. Having established a strategic partnership with Intime since 2014, Alibaba spent $2.6 billion (approximately 3.4671 trillion KRW) three years later to convert Intime into a private company and became the controlling shareholder. This move was driven by the company's strategy to expand its business, which had been limited to online, into offline channels. Currently, Intime operates and manages over 100 department stores and shopping centers across China.

However, following the spread of COVID-19, the offline retail market in China, including Intime, could not avoid being hit. Bloomberg explained, "It is unclear whether the company can attract sufficient interest amid a severe downturn in Chinese consumption, but this indicates that the new management is considering the next steps to drastically restructure the company."

Amid a recent slowdown in growth, Alibaba is reviewing changes in its management and restructuring its broad range of existing business areas, including cloud services, semiconductors, travel, and delivery services. The focus is particularly on its core e-commerce business and cloud operations.

However, the company's business restructuring seems to be progressing slowly. The $11 billion spin-off of the cloud division has been canceled, and there has been little progress on the IPO plan for the Cainiao logistics division.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.