SingPost's joint venture with Alibaba faces potential delay

A JOINT venture (JV) between Singapore Post and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba could take longer to materialise than initially envisioned.

Without explicitly naming Alibaba as the investor, SingPost said in a Singapore Exchange filing on Friday that "as the company and the investor are still in the process of fulfilling the conditions precedent as set out in the joint venture agreement", the two parties had on Feb 19 "mutually agreed in writing" to extend the long-stop date from April 7 to May 31.

It said that this was "further to the announcement made by the company on July 8, 2015 in relation to the joint venture agreement", but did not elaborate on what conditions had not been fulfilled.

A SingPost spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.

SingPost had said in a July 8, 2015 bourse filing that it and an "investor", Alibaba Investment Limited, would undertake "a series of new initiatives for collaboration and growth following the signing of a joint venture agreement".

Under this conditional JV agreement, the Alibaba unit will buy a 34 per cent stake in SingPost's wholly owned subsidiary Quantium Solutions International (QSI) for about S$91.7 million in cash, subject to certain adjustments, SingPost had said, adding that QSI would then become a JV company that would act as the platform for collaboration between SingPost and the Alibaba Group.

But it had added: "The completion of the investor's investment is subject to several conditions including a reorganisation of certain of the QSI group's current investments and business." It did not specify what the other conditions for the JV agreement were.

SingPost shares were up two Singapore cents to S$1.445 on Friday.