(Reuters) – Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma is “very positive” about the company and will continue to hold its shares, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday, citing a communiqué from his office.
The comments from Ma’s office come a day after a regulatory filing showed that his family trust was set to sell 10 million American Depository Shares of Alibaba Group Holdings, for about $871 million.
The phased sale is part of a long-standing “preset conditional plan to do a partial sell-down for the future” that was adopted in August, but “not a single share has been sold,” the publication quoted Ma’s office as saying.
“We believe the current stock price is below its fair value.”
Alibaba did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The sale will be on Nov. 21 by JSP Investment and JC Properties, funds that are part of Ma’s family trust.
The share sale announcement, together with Alibaba’s Thursday statement about scrapping plans to list its cloud unit in the light of U.S. chip import curbs, dragged the company’s Hong Kong shares down nearly 10% on Friday.
Ma stepped down as Alibaba chairman in 2019 but remains a major shareholder through his family trust.
The SCMP is owned by Alibaba.
(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
