The entrepreneur, who became an idol to amateur investors after championing well-known but languishing stocks like Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., contacted Alibaba’s board in August to make the case its shares were undervalued, the people said, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal. That’s based on a view it can achieve double-digit sales growth and almost 20% growth in free cash flow over the next five years.
Meme-stock investor Ryan Cohen has taken a stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and is pushing the e-commerce leader to buy back more of its shares, in a rare case of activism targeting a prominent Chinese firm.
Cohen, who rallied individual stock investors to help propel shares of moribund companies like GameStop Corp., built up a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the second half of last year, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private communications.
