SHANGHAI, March 17 (Reuters) – Alibaba.com Ltd , which last month replaced two top executives after a jump in fraudulent activities on its website, posted a record quarterly profit on higher new membership sign-ups.

In a move to bolster its dented image, China’s largest e-commerce company also emphasised it will focus less on customer acquisitions and more on servicing existing clients while building up synergies with the other companies in Alibaba Group.

Sales of Alibaba.com, a unit of Alibaba Group, 40 percent owned by Yahoo Inc , are closely tied to China’s exports as its website connects millions of international buyers with Chinese suppliers. The firm makes most of its revenue from selling and renewing membership packages.

The firm had recently started pushing for greater revenue growth in its value-added-services segment and increased its ties with Taobao, another subsidiary of Alibaba Group, to wean itself of membership revenue.

“Moving towards a more balanced business model, we expect our business and financial performance will be even more resilient to global issues,” said Jonathan Lu, Alibaba.com’s new chief executive in a statement.

The company replaced CEO David Wei Zhe and Chief Operating Officer Lee Shi-huei Elvis in February.

“They expect close to minimal subscriber growth this year because they want to focus on educating the existing customers on value-added services,” said Elinor Leung, a Hong Kong-based CLSA analyst.

TOKYO/SHANGHAI, March 17 (Reuters) – Toshiba Corp said an assembly line in Japan making small liquid crystal displays would be closed for a month and PC maker Lenovo voiced worries over parts, highlighting the threat to global supply chains from Japan’s devastating earthquake.

Hitachi Ltd also said production of small LCDs will be halted at its factory near Tokyo for a month as it deals with damage and power outages stemming from last week’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake.

The closures are the latest in a series of plant shutdowns by Japanese companies following the earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear fallout threat, which threatens supplies of everything from semiconductors to car parts to manufacturers across the globe.

Any lengthy disruptions to regional production networks could spill over into global supply chains, potentially putting a dent in corporate profits and economic growth more broadly, worries over which have been reflected in falls in global share prices.

Toshiba’s assembly line at a plant near Tokyo making LCDs for smartphones and other devices will be closed to repair sensitive equipment knocked out of alignment by the quake, a Toshiba spokeswoman said on Thursday.

Another plant in Japan making small displays was undamaged, she said.

The Toshiba plant supplies the mobile phone industry and auto makers for navigation displays, and its two factories including the one still operating account for about 5 percent of the global small LCD display market, said Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Capital Securities in Japan.

SHANGHAI, March 16 (Reuters) – Tencent Holdings , China’s most valuable Internet company, said it plans to invest heavily in social networking, e-commerce and search, after posting a 46 percent rise in quarterly profit.

The profit growth was the slowest in more than three years as the company is facing stiff competition in China’s red-hot online-gaming sector.

Tencent, which operates hit computer games such as Dungeon & Fighter and Cross Fire, said it will also ramp up investment in microblogging services and online security.

“I definitely think they are feeling the competition,” said Paul Wuh, a Hong Kong-based analyst with Samsung Securities.

Wuh said Tencent’s push to boost its Twitter-like microblog service was in response to Sina Corp’s popular Weibo. Tencent said its microblog had over 110 million registered users.

“I think they are doing all the right things to move into these areas and given the strength of their platform, it looks like it makes sense,” Wuh said.

Tencent, more than 30 percent owned by Naspers , Africa’s biggest media group, runs China’s largest instant messaging platform QQ and social-networking site QZone.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Coca-Cola Co (KO.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s largest soft-drink company, has made its first “billion dollar brand” from an emerging market , the company said on Tuesday, highlighting a strategy for growth with sales flattening in developed markets.

Minute Maid Pulpy, a juice drink dense with pulp, joins Coke’s lineup of 13 other brands that have achieved sales of at least $1 billion, which include Coke Zero and Diet Coke.

It is the first time that a Coca-Cola brand, developed and launched in an emerging market has reached the billion-dollar mark, said Andres Kiger, senior director of integrated marketing communications for Coca-Cola in China.

“What makes this one important for us is that this was started here, in an emerging market, China, and that’s a testament to China,” he told Reuters.

It is also testament to the company’s commitment to a market with 1.3 billion consumers, after the Chinese government blocked its $2.4 billion bid for Huiyuan (1886.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in March 2009, citing competition concerns.

That deal would have been the largest foreign takeover of a Chinese company and its rejection in the depths of the global financial crisis spawned fears China was raising barriers to overseas companies.

Minute Maid Pulpy, developed in China and released in 2005, is now sold in 18 markets including Algeria, Mexico, Malaysia and Vietnam.

SAN FRANCISCO/SHANGHAI, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Baidu Inc beat fourth quarter estimates and painted a bright near-term outlook as it bets on large advertiser spending and new Chinese Internet trends, such as social networking, to spur growth.

Shares of Baidu, a favourite pick of hedge funds, rose 7.7 percent in after-hours trade following the upbeat earnings report on Monday. Options traders predicted before the results that the stock might break out of its recent five-month trading range

China, with more than 450 million users, is the world’s largest Internet market. Yet with Internet penetration hovering around 30 percent and user sophistication outside the big cities still low, the potential for growth is huge.

“The key attractiveness of Baidu is that they are the one and only one in China, they rely on the China story, the high growth Internet market and in particular search, and there’s no other key competitor in the market,” said Benjamin Tam, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager with Investors Group.

Baidu, which has increased its focus on e-commerce and online video, grabbed more market share last year after rival Google Inc curtailed its operations following a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship. Baidu is the No. 1 Internet search engine in China with a 70 percent market share.

The company breezed past Wall Street financial targets in the fourth quarter and reported a higher-than-expected first-quarter revenue outlook.

Beijing-based Baidu’s fourth-quarter net income rose to $175.9 million, or 50 cents a share, from $62.7 million, or $1.80 a share, a year ago, before a 10-for-1 stock split. That beat analysts’ average forecast of EPS of 45 cents.

SHANGHAI, Jan 31 (Reuters) – China will permit designated banks to trade yuan/foreign currency swaps on behalf of their clients from March 1, the country’s foreign exchange regulator said.

Non-bank clients will be allowed to sign agreements now and exchange yuan and foreign currencies, and their interest rates, at a future time, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said late on Sunday. Currently only banks can trade yuan/foreign currencies swaps.

The reform is part of China’s efforts to expand yuan business to help regionalise and eventually globalise the currency.

Under U.S. pressure to allow the currency rise faster, Beijing has also vowed to make the yuan more flexible and market-oriented as the country gradually deregulates its capital markets.

Developing derivatives based on exchange rates will give Chinese banks and companies badly needed tools to hedge currency risks as the yuan gradually becomes more volatile in the future in line with those reforms.

“The notice on business related to yuan/foreign currency swaps of bank clients is issued in order to allow domestic economic entities to hedge risks,” the SAFE said in a statement on its website, www.safe.gov.cn.

Bank branches would also be allowed to perform yuan/currency swaps on behalf of clients under the precondition that they are authorised to do so by their headquarters, the SAFE said.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s top Internet search engine Baidu Inc (BIDU.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which beat profit expectations in the past four quarters, is unlikely to repeat that for the fourth quarter as margins slipped and new customer additions slowed.

Baidu, a favorite pick of hedge funds, has already flagged that 2011 will be different, telling Reuters in December it expects growth this year to moderate due to a higher comparison base and as the unique factors that spurred rapid growth in 2010 won’t be repeated.

Baidu will likely forecast first-quarter revenue in line with Wall Street estimates and its fourth-quarter margins may be crimped as traffic acquisition costs (TAC) as a proportion of revenue, a key component of the firm’s overall costs, go up, analysts said.

“There is less room for them to surprise on the upside now but they will still come up on the high end of their guidance,” said Hong Kong-based CLSA analyst Elinor Leung.

“It (TAC) dropped in Q2 and in Q3 but I think the (upward) trend will continue, that’s why we expect margins to go down,” Leung said.

China’s search market grew 67 percent in the fourth quarter to 3.2 billion yuan ($486 million) with Baidu holding a dominant 73 percent of the market by revenue compared with Google’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) 24 percent, according to data from iResearch.

E-COMMERCE BOOM

SHANGHAI, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Alibaba.com’s shares have surged 20 percent this year to nine-month highs on expectations that investments by its parent may fuel growth outside its core business.

Shares of Alibaba.com, the unit of China’s largest e-commerce firm Alibaba Group, are now trading at 50 times their estimated 2010 earnings. That compares with a price to earnings multiple of 38 for China’s largest Internet firm Tencent Holdings .

Shares in Alibaba fell about 22 percent in 2010 on concerns over China’s export recovery and slower growth in Alibaba.com’s new subscribers.

EYE ON VALUE-ADDED SERVICES

Alibaba.com earns most of its revenue from selling membership packages but last year the company put more emphasis on boosting its value-added services, which analysts say is the key to success.

“I think a lot of the rally has to do with the Ali Loan programme, I think they are going to start monetizing it soon and that has added to the positive sentiment,” said Hong Kong-based JPMorgan analyst Dick Wei.

Ali Loan is a programme started about 4 years ago where Alibaba.com acts as a middleman to help suppliers get loans.

BEIJING, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Alibaba Group and its financing partners will invest $3 billion-$4.5 billion over the medium term to set up a warehouse network in China, where the e-commerce market is booming, it said on Wednesday.

Sources told Reuters in October that Alibaba Group is planning to expand its logistics network to reach 52 cities in two years from 20 cities currently. [ID:nTOE69J06L]

“Hopefully within 10 years’ time, anyone placing an order online from anywhere in China will receive their goods within eight hours, allowing for the virtual urbanisation of every village across China,” said Jack Ma, chairman and chief executive of Alibaba Group.

Ma, the charismatic founder of the company in which Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) owns a 40 percent stake, believes that China’s logistics market is fragmented and does not offer optimal customer service.

China’s e-commerce market was worth 119.1 billion yuan ($17.93 billion) in transaction value in the second quarter, of which Taobao, a unit of Alibaba, had a 75.2 percent market share.

With about 30 percent of China’s 420 million strong Internet users shopping online, one of the biggest barriers to e-commerce is logistics.

“Creating a network of warehouse facilities is a key tactic in our strategy to resolve the bottleneck facing the logistics industry in China,” Zhang Wei, senior vice president of Alibaba Group, said in a statement.

SHANGHAI, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Daimler AG’s (DAIGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) sees China sales exceeding the 10 percent overall growth of the car market this year, a senior company executive said on Saturday.

Global luxury car makers, from Bayerische Motoren Werke AG or BMW to Audi AG , have racked up eye-popping sales in China, where a growing army of the super-rich is fuelling demand for luxury items, from Gucci handbags to Rolls-Royces.

“We want to grow faster than the 10-15 percent, our condition is that we grow faster than the total market and also the luxury car market,” Klaus Maier, chief executive for Mercedes-Benz’s China operations told reporters in Shanghai. China has been a major bright spot amid a global industry which are still recovering from a steep downturn.

But car sales this year will slow down considerably or even decline, as one industry observer had warned, after Beijing scrapped its incentive plans for small cars. [ID:nTOE70B071]

The Beijing city government’s recent move to impose quotas on new car registrations and possibly similar moves by other big cities to tackle traffic gridlock will also apply the brakes on the market. Ulrich Walker, chief executive of Daimler Northeast Asia, said he did not believe these measures would have much of a negative impact, as rising incomes and mobility are bringing new customers into the firm’s fold. “At the moment if you are talking about the (sales) volume, more than 50, 60 percent are on the east side of China, if you go west, there is a huge potential of customers who want to have mobility,” Walker said. Daimler makes Mercedes-Benz E-Class and C-Class cars in a tie-up with Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings Co (BAIC) is also in discussions to expand the joint venture’s product portfolio to include Mercedes-Benz A-Class and B-Class vehicles, Walker said.

In 2010, a total of 147,670 Mercedes-Benz cars were sold in China, up 115 percent. Volkswagen’s Audi sold 227,928 units while BMW sold 168,998 units. [ID:nTOE70B06A]

Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche said in October 2010 he aimed to sell 300,000 Mercedes-Benz cars in China annually in 2015.