Benzinga | Sep 3, 2021 09:40AM EDT

How Alibaba, Tencent, Didi Win Amid Odds Versus Their Western Counterparts?

* The Stern School of Business professor considers Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), Tencent Holdings Ltd (OTC:TCEHY) as the most undervalued despite further downside risks from China's regulatory crackdown, Bloomberg reports.

* The constraints brought in by recent Chinese government actions on tech behemoths are "reasonable," and any potential ban on firms using shell companies for foreign listings will unlikely be retroactive, Aswath Damodaran blogged.

* Damodaran adjudged DiDi Global Inc (NYSE:DIDI) and JD.com Inc (NASDAQ:JD) as close to being fairly valued. He endorsed Tencent over Alibaba due to the former's more balanced business mix.

* Interestingly, China's crackdown on the sector is more about "exercising control over both companies and data" than concerns about consumers or competition like the U.S. counterparts. However, more government aggression could wreak havoc on Didi's valuations.

* China's internet stocks lost out on the gains accumulated earlier this week following the country's fresh attack on the ride-hailing business.

* Valuations: Alibaba trades at 18.9x its earnings, Tencent at 24.6x compared to Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) at 47.8x its earnings.

* Didi trades at just 1.5 times its sales versus Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) at 6 times its sales.

* Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 1.44% at $169.53 in the market session on the last check Friday.