Singles Day 2019's Alibaba sales break records - CBS News

"Singles Day" may sound lonely, but those taking part are finding some togetherness in what amounts to the world's largest annual shopping spree, with more than $1 billion spent in just over a minute in an eye-popping start to Monday's event. 

More than halfway through the unofficial Chinese shopping holiday known as Singles Day, sales volume had already blown past last year's total, according to Alibaba, China's version of Amazon, which showed the running tally live on its web site.

In terms of money spent, China's one-day festival of consumption has already eclipsed predictions of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday — combined. Adobe Analytics, the retail data tracking service, estimates that the long U.S. holiday shopping weekend this year will generate total retail sales of $29 billion — that's less than the $36 billion generated more than half-way through this year's 24-hour Singles Day sales period, which last year fueled $30 billion in sales.

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Alibaba reported selling $1 billion worth of goods sold in 1 minute and 8 seconds. It sold $12 billion in the first hour, the company said in a statement. China's biggest online direct retailer, JD.com, reported sales of $25.6 billion by mid-afternoon. 

Retailers offered discounts on products from smartphones to craft beer to health care packages.

"Yesterday night, I was browsing past 11 p.m. Many of my friends around me were staying up till 2 a.m. to buy stuff," said Zhu Yirun, a graduate student in Beijing.

What's morphed into an astounding revenue-generating enterprise started out among Chinese university students holding parties to celebrate being single in 1993, only to be co-opted by Alibaba 16 years later. The China-based retailing giant marked down merchandise in a marketing campaign that had other e-commerce companies soon doing the same. A decade later, the event now gives Amazon Prime Day a run for its money.

Workers sort international parcels at a cross-border e-commerce industrial park ahead of the Singles Day online shopping festival in Hefei, Anhui, province, China, on November 2, 2019.  Reuters

This year, more than 200,000 brands are participating, Alibaba said. The company hyped the event with a "Countdown Gala" featuring a performance by pop singer Taylor Swift Sunday night at a Shanghai stadium.

Taylor Swift Confirmed Among Acts for Alibaba's #Double11 Countdown Gala. https://t.co/OEXXQI1Avh pic.twitter.com/iP0BV76OF9

— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) October 28, 2019

American companies are also getting in on the act. Nearly a quarter of U.S. retailers plan to run promotions for Singles Day, according to Adobe, which surveyed more than 400 U.S. retailers with annual sales in excess of $500,000.

That said, U.S.-China trade tensions could ding American brands taking part this year, concludes another study by global consultancy AlixPartners.

Chinese consumers plan to spend 54% more this year than in 2018, but 78% of Chinese surveyed said they would think twice about buying U.S. products due to loyalty to their country, AlixPartners found in a recent survey of more than 2,000 Chinese consumers.

E-commerce has grown quickly in China, the result of a lack of traditional retailing networks as well as government efforts to encourage internet use on official channels. The nation has 800 million people online.

Monday marks Alibaba's first Singles Day since its founder, Jack Ma, stepped down as chairman in September. He remains as a member of the Alibaba Partnership, a 36-member group with the right to nominate a majority of the company's board of directors.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2019-11-11 15:54:00Z
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China: Alibaba Singles' Day sales on course for new record - Deutsche Welle

China's biggest online shopping festival, Singles' Day, got underway at Sunday midnight local time, with e-commerce giant Alibaba saying 84 billion yuan ($12 billion) worth of goods were sold in the first hour, compared with 69 billion yuan last year.

It took only 63 minutes and 59 seconds for sales to hit 100 billion yuan ($14.3 billion). The first billion yuan was spent in the first 68 seconds, according to Alibaba.

Singles' Day has broken sales records every year in its 10-year history. Total sales last year amounted to more than $30 billion, which beats the revenue taken by US retailers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

A new record is expected again this year, despite a slowing economy partly due to the US-China trade war.

However, the 27% sales growth from 2017 to 2018 was the lowest since the event began in 2009, leading Alibaba, with its main e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall, to search for new ways to stimulate consumers' purchasing desires this time round.

Read more: Why Amazon struggled to beat Alibaba online in China

Environmental problems

The event is named after the calendar date 11/11, with the four ones seen as symbolizing the state of being single. It started out on Chinese campuses as a celebration of the unmarried or unpartnered lifestyle.

This year, the 24-hour shopping fest kicked off with a performance by US pop star Taylor Swift.

Singles' Day is taking place this year for the first time without Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, who resigned as chairman in September.

In the past, the event has been criticized by environmentalist groups for the large amount of packaging waste generated by the online sales.

Read more:Who is Alibaba's next chairman Daniel Zhang? 

ed, tj/stb (Reuters, dpa)

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November 11, 2019 at 04:14PM

Global oil demand could peak in 2020, Saudi Aramco IPO shows - Aljazeera.com

Global oil demand may peak within the next 20 years, according to an assessment included in the prospectus for Saudi Aramco's initial public offering, suggesting views are slowly changing in the kingdom where officials long dismissed the notion as overblown.

Rather than providing its own assessment, Aramco used a forecast from industry consultant IHS Markit Ltd. that forecasts oil demand to peak around 2035. Under that scenario, demand growth for crude and other oil liquids will be "leveling off" at that time. In an accompanying chart, the Saudi oil giant showed global oil demand lower in 2045 than in 2040.

While Aramco didn't explicitly endorse the forecast, its inclusion in the 658-page IPO prospectus will bring it the attention of investors worldwide. The company's directors believe that the data provided by the industry consultant are "reliable," according to the prospectus.

A second scenario in the prospectus, which is essentially a marketing document for Aramco's share sale, assumes a faster transition away from fossil fuels that leads to peak oil demand occurring in the late 2020s.

As recently as February, Aramco Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser dismissed concerns about the rise of alternatives to oil as "not based on logic and facts" and said they arose "mostly in response to pressure and hype." A year earlier at an industry event in Houston, he said he was "not losing any sleep over 'peak oil demand'." Khalid Al-Falih, the country's petroleum minister until two months ago, was equally dismissive, saying in 2017 that talk about peak demand among energy executives, analysts and activists was "misguided."

The forecasts also stretch much further into the future than those Aramco provided in the prospectus for its April bond sale. Just over six months ago, the company was only giving investors a view of oil markets up until 2030, while now it's providing a view way to 2050. Back in April, Aramco gave no indication that a peak in oil demand was on the horizon.

European majors like Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA have already stated concerns about oil demand peaking. Still, Aramco can take some solace in the fact that as one of the lowest-cost producers, its market share may rise as demand slips. Even in a bearish case for oil, with demand peaking in the late 2020s, Saudi Arabia's market share could rise from around 15% to 20% by 2050, according to the prospectus.

Aramco published the prospectus on Saturday as it pushes ahead with what could be the biggest-ever share sale. One thing absent from the document was any suggestion of what valuation Aramco is aiming for. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said Aramco should be valued at $2 trillion, but bankers who have tried to value the company have suggested it may be worth anywhere from $1.1 trillion to $2.5 trillion. Investors will start bidding to buy shares in the oil company starting on Nov. 17.

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November 11, 2019 at 08:11AM

There Sure Are a Lot of People in China Buying Stuff Online Today - The New York Times

The planet’s biggest shopping day is upon us, and Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, is poised again to show the world how many mountains of stuff it can persuade people to buy in the 24 hours of Nov. 11, also known as Singles Day. Last year, more than $30 billion worth of merchandise was sold on Alibaba’s platforms, by the company’s own count, making Black Friday look like a yard sale.

On Monday, sales volume had already surpassed the 2018 total by late afternoon, Alibaba declared.

The eye-popping numbers, which Alibaba manages to make even more eye-popping year after year, reflect the changing times since the company invented the retail event a decade ago.

China has grown richer and more digitally connected. Alibaba has become a technology powerhouse — a sprawling, sector-straddling colossus no less ambitious than Amazon or Alphabet. Along the way, the company has made a few famous friends. Its live-streamed evening gala in Shanghai on Sunday featured the singer Taylor Swift.

Eminences who have graced the Singles Day stage in previous years include the model Miranda Kerr and the actors Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

Ms. Swift’s presence this year was its own indicator of the times. Despite the tariff war with the United States and Beijing’s willingness to punish foreign brands that do not bend to the views of the Communist Party, Singles Day shows that the world still wants to come to China, at least when giant buckets of money are involved.

The buckets may not be so giant forever. The Chinese economy is not exactly going great guns. Washington and Beijing have entered a new age of competition and distrust.

The big numbers that Alibaba likes to show off on Singles Day are not a perfect gauge of how all this might be affecting middle-class China’s appetite for retail therapy.

The company reports something called gross merchandise volume, which is meant to represent the total value of orders on its platforms. But there is no standardized way of measuring it, and Alibaba’s Nov. 11 figures are not audited. The company’s Singles Day accounting has previously attracted the scrutiny of financial regulators in the United States, where Alibaba’s shares are listed.

Wang Shuting, a designer in Shanghai who is in her early 30s, said American brands such as Patagonia and North Face had lost none of their appeal since things became tense between her country and the United States. The whole trade war thing? It feels pointless, she said.

“China has China’s advantages, and the U.S. has the U.S.’s advantages,” Ms. Wang said. “There’s no need for both sides to lose.”

Alibaba executives sound confident that Chinese shoppers will continue spending merrily. The company has certainly worked hard to ensure that they keep spending with Alibaba, and not somewhere else. Alibaba now calls itself a data and technology company, one that provides digital tools to help the businesses on its platforms. That, in turn, leads consumers to look to those platforms for their every need, from shopping and services to entertainment and travel.

Alibaba’s sheer bigness is another change. In 2009, two weeks before the company held its first Nov. 11 shopping festival, Jack Ma, who was its chief executive at the time, wrote an op-ed piece in The International Herald Tribune in which he predicted that the internet would soon allow small businesses to compete head-to-head with giant corporations. Alibaba’s platforms were helping to bring this about, Mr. Ma wrote.

Today, Alibaba is itself a giant corporation, and it wants to grow bigger still.

The headline on Mr. Ma’s article: “Small Is Beautiful.”

Wang Yiwei contributed research.

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2019-11-11 11:45:00Z
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The two sides of China: A shopping bonanza and protests in Hong Kong - CNN

Investors dumped Hong Kong stocks after demonstrators targeted public transportation in Asia's top financial hub and police shot a protester, a daylight escalation of violence that comes after five months of unrest.

The Hang Seng Index dropped more than 2.6% on Monday, its worst single-day percentage decline since the beginning of August. The city's real estate stocks were hit particularly hard, with big property developers like Swire Pacific, Wharf Real Estate, Sun Hung Kai Properties and New World Development all dropping more than 4%.

Why investors are worried: Widespread protests blocked roadways and several subway lines experienced delays. A police officer shot a 21-year-old protester. Elsewhere in the city, a man who confronted a group of protesters was set on fire.

More trouble ahead: The disruption caused by months of pro-democracy protests have slammed luxury retailers, property developers and the tourism industry and plunged Hong Kong into its first recession in a decade. Yet there's no sign that protesters or government officials in Hong Kong or Beijing are preparing to back down.

Plus, the latest on trade: Monday was the first opportunity that markets in Asia had to respond to comments from US President Donald Trump, who said Friday in the United States that he has yet to agree to rolling back tariffs.

That undercut a statement from China's Commerce Ministry that indicated a willingness to make such a concession as part of the first phase of a trade deal between the two countries.

"They'd like to have a rollback," Trump said. "I haven't agreed to anything. China would like to get somewhat of a rollback, not a complete rollback because they know I won't do it."

A day earlier, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce told reporters that US and Chinese negotiators had discussed rolling back tariffs, saying that could happen even before a "phase one" trade deal is signed.

Despite Trump's remarks, Wall Street ended last week at record highs.

What a huge shopping day says about China's economy

China's annual Singles Day online shopping bonanza has brought in a record $31 billion in sales for Alibaba (BABA).

The country's biggest e-commerce company topped last year's record in 16 1/2 hours. While the event regularly racks up bigger sales than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, total spending across the industry will take a while to tabulate.

A recent survey from Oliver Wyman found that buyers are expecting to spend nearly 10% more on Singles Day this year compared to 2018. That could be a sign of weakening growth, though. Last year, Alibaba reported a 27% uptick in Singles Day revenue.

"Singles Day is being held up as a bellwether of Chinese consumers' willingness to spend in the face of a domestic slowdown," wrote Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst for Asia Pacific at Oanda, in a note Monday. But "deeply discounting prices always brings consumers out to play, no matter how bad the economy might be," he added.

How to pick the best streaming service

Some of the biggest companies in tech and media are waging an all-out war in the streaming market. The prize: Your time and your money.

Apple, CBS, Comcast, Disney and CNN's parent WarnerMedia are all trying to compete with Netflix and Amazon — two powerful companies that have transformed the entertainment industry.

The insurgents and the incumbents alike are poaching top-tier talent, spending billions of dollars and making flashy, celebratory announcements about exclusive content deals to lure as many subscribers to their service as possible.

How to choose: This can be difficult for consumers to navigate. Which service has the best children's program? Which one is best for classic films? Where can I watch "Friends?" How much will this all cost me?

Fear not — CNN Business is here to help. We've created a guide that breaks down your options by price as well as content. You can access it by clicking here.

Tencent Music (TME) reports earnings after the closing bell.

Coming tomorrow: Disney+ launches; German economic sentiment; Earnings from CBS (CBS), Overstock (OSTBP), Tyson Foods (TSN) and Tilray (TLRY).

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2019-11-11 11:40:00Z
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Kaiser Permanente CEO's death postpones strike by 4,000 medical professionals - Fox Business

United States Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie discusses how it's important to honor veterans every day, not just on Veterans Day, and one way we can do that is by supporting them.

More than 4,000 psychologists and other medical professionals postponed their strike against health care provider Kaiser Permanente indefinitely following the death of CEO Bernard Tyson on Sunday.

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The National Union of Healthcare Workers was set to strike from Monday to Friday to demand Kaiser Permanente improve retirement and health benefits as well as look at clinicians' proposals to improve mental health care access.

"We offer our condolences to Bernard's family, friends and colleagues," NUHW President Sal Rosselli said in a statement. "Our members dedicate their lives to helping people through tragedy and trauma, and they understood that a strike would not be appropriate during this period of mourning and reflection."

One hundred seventy union leaders voted Sunday afternoon to postpone the strike, which would have shuttered mental health services at roughly 100 Kaiser Permanente clinics and medical facilities across California.

Bernard Tyson was CEO of Kaiser Permanente from 2013 to 2019. Photo courtesy of Kaiser Permanente

KAISER PERMANENTE CEO BERNARD TYSON DEAD AT 60

Tyson died in his sleep early Sunday morning. He was 60.

"I've known Bernard since he was a manager at Kaiser Oakland Medical Center in the early 1980s," Rosselli said. "While we had our differences, I had tremendous respect for him and his willingness to collaborate with workers to make Kaiser the model provider of medical services in California. We weren't able to achieve that same level of collaboration when it comes to Kaiser's mental health services, but I believed that he did want Kaiser to achieve real parity for mental health care, and I know our members remain fully committed to realizing that goal."

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Kaiser Permanente maintains that a strike will not help the two sides "achieve a mutually beneficial contract." NUHW therapists receive an excellent wage and benefit package as well as plenty of time to do paperwork and make calls, Kaiser Permanente vice president of communications John Nelson told The Sacramento Bee.

Kaiser Permanente has "taken important steps to help address the nation’s crisis in mental health care – hiring hundreds of new therapists, building new treatment facilities, and investing $40 million to help people enter the mental health care profession. A strike does nothing to advance our important work to advance care, nor does it help us achieve a mutually beneficial contract," Nelson said.

FOX Business' inquiry to Kaiser Permanente was not returned immediately.

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2019-11-11 11:34:21Z
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Hong Kong's Hang Seng has its worst day in months as violence escalates - CNN

The Hang Seng Index (HSI) dropped more than 2.6%, its worst single-day percentage decline since the beginning of August, according to Refinitiv data.

Monday's declines came on the heels of new and shocking levels of violence in the Asian financial hub. A traffic officer shot a 21-year-old protester and fired two more live rounds early in the day. The protester had surgery and is in critical condition, hospital authorities say.

Later, in another part of the city, a man who confronted a group of protesters was doused in a flammable liquid and set alight. The incident was captured in a graphic video seen by CNN.

Protests disrupted public transit throughout the city on Monday, as demonstrators blocked roadways and several subway lines experienced delays. Several months of protests have plunged Hong Kong into its first recession in a decade.

Monday's fall wiped out the Hang Seng's gains posted last week, when optimism over the prospects of a US-China trade deal lifted Asian markets.

The city's real estate stocks were hit particularly hard, with big property developers like Swire Pacific (SWRAY), Wharf Real Estate, Sun Hung Kai Properties (SUHJF) and New World Development (NDVLY) all dropping more than 4%.

While Hong Kong led losses in the region, other major Asian markets were all down Monday as investors also tried to make sense of the muddled state of US-China trade relations.

China's Shanghai Composite (SHCOMP) declined 1.8%. South Korea's Kospi (KOSPI) slumped 0.6%. Japan's Nikkei (N225) edged down 0.3%.

Monday was the first opportunity that markets in Asia had to respond to comments from US President Donald Trump, who said Friday in the United States that he has yet to agree to rolling back tariffs. That undercut a statement from China's Commerce Ministry that indicated a willingness to make such a concession as part of the first phase of a trade deal between the two countries.

"They'd like to have a rollback," Trump said. "I haven't agreed to anything. China would like to get somewhat of a rollback, not a complete rollback because they know I won't do it."

A day earlier, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce told reporters that US and Chinese negotiators had discussed rolling back tariffs, saying the rollbacks could happen even before a "phase one" trade deal is signed.

Despite Trump's remarks, Wall Street ended last week at record highs.

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2019-11-11 10:14:00Z
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