When we talk about BAT, it is only normal that a lot of you will not understand it. BAT represents the three biggest technology companies that are based in China.
These companies are Baidu, which is the equivalent of Google in China, Alibaba Group Holding, which is the e-commerce giant, and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
The stocks of these three tech companies are normally compared with FAANG stocks which are in the USA. These stocks are Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and alphabet.
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Some people think that BAT stocks are solid investment opportunities due to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy. They also believe that the companies based in China have a bigger potential domestic market and have been able to get ahead of their rivals in the USA in areas like mobile payments.
And then some are of the view that the Chinese stocks are normally influenced by swings and also point out that technology is a frothy sector.
Such people are likely of the view that the Bat stocks and FAANG stocks are both overvalued. Now, let us take a look at the little history of the BAT companies and see how they are faring in the financial world as of 2021.
Baidu
Baidu was founded by Robin Li and Eric Xu in 2000.
According to them, their products and services are accessed by more than one billion devices every month. The company has been listed on NASDAQ since 2005.
It was also listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Baidu offers something similar to what is offered by Wikipedia in the USA. However, editing cannot take place that easily on Baidu like how it can be done on Wikipedia.
Other services offered to users are maps, music, and social media. Baidu is also into artificial intelligence and self-driving research.
Baidu has a capital of $58 billion and holds more than 76% of the market share in China. It also saw $16.4 billion in revenue in 2020.
Alibaba
The company deals in e-commerce, cloud computing, entertainment, and digital media. It operates through two portals which are Taobao and Tmall.
Alibaba also owns Alipay which is a payment service that offers financial services for users as well as merchants on the Alibaba platform. Alibaba now boasts active users of over 1.18 billion annually, which is a milestone for the company, with 912 million of these in China and the remaining outside china.
Alibaba has a market cap of $476.96 billion and revenue of $109.48 billion for 2021. This is a 42% increase from the previous year’s revenue.
As of now, the CEO of the tech giant is Daniel Zhang, taking over from Jack Ma since 2015.
Tencent
Founded in 1998 in china, Tencent is a tech company that offers a wide range of tech products such as social media, music, web portals, e-commerce, mobile games, payment systems, smartphones, and the internet.
It is the owner of the chat app WeChat, which has over a billion users per month and is used in China. WeChat is used in China because Whatsapp is not allowed in China since 2017.
Tencent also supports other services and features and it owns Clash of Clans, which is an online multiplayer game that has millions of users. As of now, Tencent has a market cap of $646.74 billion and brought revenue of $74.69 billion in 2020. The CEO of Tencent is Pony Ma.
- Conclusion
So now you know what BAT means. Whenever you hear BAT, you know that whoever said it is referring to Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, the biggest tech firms in China.
