阿里巴巴收购优酷土豆或许是一次双赢

Alibaba’s Bid for Youku Tudou Could Be Win-Win
阿里巴巴收购优酷土豆或许是一次双赢

What may soon be streaming at the Chinese video site Youku Tudou are tears of relief.

可能很快，中国视频网站优酷土豆便会流下如释重负的泪水。

Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, has offered to buy the 82 percent of Youku that it doesn’t already own, at a 30 percent premium to the market price. A deal would end Youku’s unprofitable run as a public company and help Alibaba realize its multiscreen strategy. The move should also create value. Though that bit is most likely an afterthought.

中国最大的电子商务企业阿里巴巴提出购买优酷余下的82%股份，其出价高于市价30%。这宗交易将终止优酷作为上市公司的亏损营运，并有助阿里巴巴实现多屏战略。此举应该也能带来收入，但这应该不是主要目的。

Youku is the dominant force in Chinese online video ― effectively the YouTube of the People’s Republic. Like YouTube, it has never reported a profit. Aside from advertising fees, Youku is now charging users to watch its best content, but that means giving them something worth watching.

优酷在中国网络视频中举足轻重，实际上如同中国的YouTube。跟YouTube一样，优酷从未报告过盈利。除广告费外，优酷目前还向用户收费，收费用户能观看最精彩的内容，但这意味着优酷需要为用户提供有观看价值的视频。

The fees Youku paid for content increased 78 percent over the last year to 744 million renminbi, or about $117 million, in the latest quarter. Larger rivals like Baidu, a search engine that also owns an online video site, can swallow those costs with ease. That’s not the case for tiny Youku.

在最近一个季度，优酷在内容方面的支出较一年前增加了78%，达到了7.44亿元人民币（约1.17亿美元）。搜索引擎百度也拥有网络视频网站。像百度这种大型竞争对手，能轻松地承担这笔成本，但弱小的优酷就不能了。

It may seem petty to consider whether the deal creates value for Alibaba shareholders, but, as it happens, it probably does. The 30 percent premium is worth around $1.2 billion. Yet Youku’s bandwidth costs alone ― what it pays for telecoms and data storage ― are an annualized $213 million. If the data colossus Alibaba can eliminate those, the savings, taxed at Youku’s 15 percent rate and capitalized, are worth more than $1.8 billion.

这宗交易能否为阿里巴巴的股东创造价值？或许考虑这个问题会显得很小气，但这还真有可能发生。阿里巴巴给出的30%溢价大约相当于12亿美元。然而，单单是花在电信企业和数据存储上的带宽成本，优酷每年的支出便达到2.13亿美元。如果数据巨头阿里巴巴能消除这方面的支出并注入资本（优酷需缴纳15%的税款），便能节省超过18亿美元。

Beyond that, the benefits of the deal are fairly abstract. Perhaps Alibaba will create a Chinese answer to Netflix. Perhaps it will sell more video advertising spots to its online merchants. Alibaba and Youku may even be able to use data about shoppers’ online habits to create programming relevant to their activities.

除此之外，这宗交易带来的收益相当抽象。或许阿里巴巴会创造一个中国版的Netflix。或许阿里巴巴会向网上店铺推销更多视频广告位。阿里巴巴和优酷甚至还可以利用购物者上网习惯的数据，制作与用户活动有关的节目。

But really, who cares? Youku is less than 3 percent of the combined companies’ market value. And approval is more than likely a given, since almost 60 percent of the shares are held by Alibaba and its supporters, such as Victor Koo, a Youku founder, who will also receive an undisclosed package for staying on as chairman.

不过说真的，谁在乎呢？优酷占合并后公司市值不足3%。而且阿里巴巴及其支持者持有优酷近60%的股份，批准合并已如探囊取物。支持者就包括优酷创始人古永锵，他将会收到条款未对外公布的补偿，以换取其留任董事长。