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Ann Cao

Chinese tech giants including Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding, Meituan, and Xiaomi have launched aggressive share buy-back programmes to revive investor confidence amid continuing scepticism towards the sector, while analysts suggest that a bottoming out could soon be in sight.
Plagued by stock prices that have hit alarming lows in recent trading cycles, the tech heavyweights are leaning on massive share repurchase programmes and high-profile appearances by company leaders to boost market confidence.
“With solid net cash positions and outstanding buy-back programmes, we expect companies to accelerate the buy-back pace,” Citi Research analysts said in a recent note.
Tencent Holdings repurchased nearly HK$10 billion (US$1.27 billion) of its own shares in June, marking its largest monthly buy-back this year. Meanwhile, Alibaba Group Holding spent more than US$50 million on share repurchases last week alone.
Food delivery giant Meituan also disclosed a fresh buy-back of nearly HK$200 million on Monday and Tuesday. That came after the company’s founder and CEO Wang Xing addressed the company’s sluggish market valuation head-on at its annual general meeting last Friday, acknowledging that its recent stock performance has been unsatisfactory.
Backing up his words, Meituan’s CFO Chen Shaohui said the company would accelerate plans for share buy-backs in a bid to stabilise the stock. Wang added that the company also aimed to boost market confidence by other measures, including cashing out external investments.
Xiaomi, the smartphone and electric vehicle maker, has also taken similar drastic steps following consecutive quarters of share price declines. The Beijing-based company has spent HK$1.2 billion in share buy-backs since mid-June.
The latest efforts by the big tech companies reflect a pressing need to prove their long-term resilience to Wall Street and Hong Kong investors, as they seek to navigate sluggish market sentiment partly driven by a shift in global investment trends towards pure-play artificial intelligence companies like Minimax and Zhipu AI.
Xiaomi’s Hong Kong-listed stock has dropped over 40 per cent since the beginning of 2026. The shares of both Alibaba and Meituan dropped over 30 per cent, while Tencent lost nearly 30 per cent.
“These traditional tech stocks have a smaller proportion of AI businesses, causing funds to flow out of these stocks and into other AI fields,” said Kenny Ng, a strategist at Everbright Securities International.

Alibaba and Meituan, meanwhile, have been engaged in a prolonged battle in the food delivery sector, as the two companies have poured billions of yuan into their fight for a larger market share.
The competition has faded recently, as Chinese authorities stepped in with regulations aiming to crack down on the misuse of subsidies by the platforms. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
While analysts suggest these share buy-back plans might only serve as a temporary fix, they believe the tech stocks are likely to bottom out soon.
“We believe that fundamentals will eventually prevail,” Citi Research analysts said. Companies with a strong core business, healthy and sustainable profitability and powerful cash flow generation are best positioned to navigate the volatility of the AI evolution cycle, they added.
Everbright’s Ng noted that after a persistent decline in the first half of the year, valuations now have more room to rise than fall.
“Their forward price-to-earnings ratios, such as Tencent and Alibaba, are only around 10 times,” Ng said, adding that the multiples are not high. “The room for further steep declines is relatively limited.”
Meanwhile, the companies’ founders have also made highly visible public appearances recently as they look to boost investor confidence.
In June, Alibaba founder Jack Ma and top executives gathered in Hangzhou for a rural rice-planting team-building event, in a move to signal unity within the company as the tech giant sharpens its AI strategies.
Following the agricultural outing, one Alibaba executive published an internal blog post urging employees to embrace hard work and persistence during the company’s transition.
As part of the company’s charm offensive, Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s founder and CEO, was spotted eating traditional food at a small roadside stool in the central city of Wuhan in mid-June while visiting the World Youth Development Forum.


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Big Tech

Firms like Tencent and Alibaba are trying to boost investor confidence in the sector, whose stock prices have recently hit alarming lows


Firms like Tencent and Alibaba are trying to boost investor confidence in the sector, whose stock prices have recently hit alarming lows.


Will share buy-backs help Chinese big tech companies rescue battered valuations?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Firms like Tencent and Alibaba are trying to boost investor confidence in the sector, whose stock prices have recently hit alarming lows

Firms like Tencent and Alibaba are trying to boost investor confidence in the sector, whose stock prices have recently hit alarming lows