Cathie Wood Can't Get Enough Of These 3 Chinese Alibaba Rivals

Cathie Wood-led Ark Investment Management has recently been heavily buying into three Chinese stocks that are rival to Alibaba Group Holding (NYSE:BABA) in the e-commerce and online groceries space.

The Jack Ma-led Alibaba has seen its shares slump 21.4% since October last year over troubles with the Chinese government, including the scuttling of the planned initial public offering of fintech subsidiary Ant Group. Alibaba was fined $2.8 billion by China in April as what many perceived to be the end of regulatory troubles for the e-commerce giant.

Wood's firm continues to hold about 636,894 shares in Alibaba, worth around $147.1 million as of Friday, but it has, in recent months, piled up significantly on stocks of rivals, some of which now account for a better part of its holdings than Alibaba.

Pinduoduo Inc (NASDAQ:PDD): Ark started picking up shares of the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo in March and has so far picked a total of 1,452,181 shares, worth about $194.5 million, as per Friday's closing.

The Ark Fintech Innovation ETF (NYSE:ARKF) and the ArkNext Generation Internet ETF (NYSE:ARKW) currently hold the PDD shares.

The Shanghai-based company is known to be China's largest agriculture-based platform and had last year launched Duo Duo Grocery, a next-day grocery pickup service. Farmers list their fruits and vegetables for direct sale to consumers.

Shares of Pinduoduo closed 2.59% lower at $133.93 on Friday.

JD.com Inc (NASDAQ:JD): The investment firm holds about 6,064,238 shares, worth about $469.1 million, of the Chinese e-commerce company via four of its funds. These are ARKF, ARKW, the Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (BATS:ARKQ) and the Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (BATS:ARKX).

JD.com is an e-commerce company headquartered in Beijing that runs one of the two massive B2C online retailers in China and is a major competitor to Alibaba-run Tmall.

JD stock closed 0.6% lower at $77.36 on Friday.

Meituan (OTC:MPNGY): Ark holds 3,264,117 Hong Kong shares of the company, worth about $125.2 million, via ARKF and ARKX.

The New York-based investment firm had earlier this week said in its research note that it believes Meituan is challenging competitors such as JD Logistics and Alibaba's Cainiao in the last-mile autonomous delivery race.

“While wider adoption will depend on regulatory approval by district, slower moving robo-delivery vans without passengers probably will have to clear lower safety hurdles than robotaxis that are transporting passengers,” Ark analyst Yulong Cui wrote in a note to investors.

Meituan had earlier this week raised $10 billion to fund its last-mile autonomous delivery minivan and drone program to counter Alibaba in the grocery arena. After nearly a year of testing, Meituan is launching its next-generation autonomous delivery minivans in Beijing's Shunyi district.

Meituan OTC shares closed 2.48% lower at $76.64 on Friday.