Alibaba shares fall 5.9% in Hong Kong amid renewed regulatory scrutiny
Key Facts
Alibaba shares fell 5.9% to HK$97.55 during trading on October 22, 2026, according to Investing.com, coinciding with a Chinese regulatory move targeting product and service quality on e-commerce platforms. The selloff also hit rival JD.com, whose shares fell 4.7% to HK$97.90 during the same session. Pressure extended to U.S. premarket trading, where Alibaba's Investing.com page showed its depositary receipts at US$100.28, down 3.96%. The company's shares, traded under the ticker BABA, had closed the October 21 session at $104.41, according to EL7 data. The latest U.S. reading came during premarket trading on October 22, while Asian prices reflected ongoing trading in Hong Kong. Across the sector, the Hang Seng Tech Index fell more than 4% during the session, according to Investing.com. The index reached its lowest level since September 2024, taking its loss since the start of 2026 to more than 30%.
The market pressure on Alibaba follows quarterly results that combined group revenue growth with a sharp decline in net income, according to the company's earnings release for the quarter ended June 2026. Revenue reached 268,953 million yuan, up 9% year on year, as the group continued to expand sales on an annual basis. Net income, however, fell 75% to 10,444 million yuan, compared with 42,382 million yuan in the quarter ended June 2025. The cloud and artificial intelligence computing services business recorded revenue of 48,437 million yuan in the quarter ended June 2026. Revenue from the business grew 45% year on year, outpacing the group's total revenue growth over the same period. Quarterly capital expenditure totalled about 67,678 million yuan, according to the official results, as the company combined expansion in computing and artificial intelligence services with lower group profits.
On artificial intelligence infrastructure spending, Investing.com, citing Reuters in a report published on October 20, 2026, said ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had ordered computing cards from Nvidia. The companies' combined orders exceeded 3 million cards as part of their expansion in this infrastructure. The total value of these orders exceeds $35 billion, according to the report, which places Alibaba among Chinese companies making large purchases of computing equipment. In global markets, the Asian selloff was preceded by a 5.5% weekly loss for the Nasdaq 100 in the week before the October 22 coverage, according to Investing.com. That was the index's steepest weekly loss since April 2025, with declines in Chinese technology shares coming amid broader pressure on the sector that hit the U.S. market before the selloff spread to Asia.
On the regulatory front, China's market regulator said it recently held a meeting in Beijing focused on improving the quality of platforms' products and services and strengthening their responsibilities. Representatives from Taotian, JD.com, Pinduoduo and Douyin attended, alongside platforms Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Doudian, Vipshop and Dewu, and exchanged views on these issues, according to the regulator's statement. The regulator warned of persistent problems involving counterfeit and substandard goods, including the sale of products that do not match the descriptions shown to consumers. It said in its statement that "problems such as counterfeit and substandard goods, products not matching their descriptions, and false advertising continue to occur from time to time." It also pointed to increasingly complex quality risks associated with livestream commerce, instant retail and social commerce, broadening the range of issues covered by platform oversight. As part of its follow-up work, the regulator urged companies to explore preparing and publishing reports on quality governance indicators for their platforms. It said the aim was to "guide high-quality consumption with high-quality information," placing disclosure of product and service quality among its upcoming regulatory workstreams.