Alibaba (BABA): $8 Billion Singles Day Sales Expected – Steve Wang, Tom Jastrzab

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) is set to shatter its previous record for volume of merchandize it ships on the “Singles Day” shopping event, Steve Wang said in a recent discussion on Bloomberg’s On The Move Asia. Tom Jastrzab is inclined to agree.

Last year, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) recorded $5.7 billion in sales during its “Singles Day” event across all of its web properties. This year, Wang who is with Reorient Financial Markets, says that estimates for the event is about 50 billion renminbi or about $8.16 billion.

“It’s going to be one of the biggest sale events Chinese people have seen in their lives,” Wang said.

He noted that there are about 300 million netizens in China on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA)’s sites and these people are looking for deals online.

Furthermore, he told Rishaad Salamat that the retail landscape in the U.S. does not actually compare to the internet retail landscape in China. He said that the Chinese retail landscape is worth about 25 trillion renminbi every year with the market still growing.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tom Jastrzab agrees that Chinese e-commerce, in particular “Singles Day,” does not compare to say “Cyber Monday” in the U.S. For example, “Singles Day” in China last year generated $5.75 billion in merchandize volume for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) while “Cyber Monday” in the U.S. was only less than a third of that.

Furthermore, Jastrzab said that there was over $1.6 billion in sales for Alibaba within the first 20 minutes of their “Singles Day” event.

Nonetheless, there is some bit of bad news for the Chinese giant. Jastrzab said that because of these sales events, some customers may put off buying what they want in search of a discount come November.

Furthermore, Jack Ma, founder and CEO of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), which owns some of the most valuable brands in China, predicted some “Singles Day” delivery delays as the government of China put in place restrictions on traffic for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing.