what are bat stocks 
bat is an acronym referring to three of the largest tech companies in china baidu inc bidu alibaba group holding ltd baba and tencent holdings ltd 0700 hong kong tcehy these stocks are frequently compared with the faang stocks in the united states meta formerly facebook meta amazon amzn apple aapl netflix inc nflx and alphabet goog understanding bat stocksas is usually the case in the financial world there are competing attitudes in regard to the value of bat stocks many commentators cite china s rapid economic growth and growing consumer base as signs that bat presents a solid investment opportunity other investors bullish on bat note that chinese companies have a larger potential domestic market and have pulled ahead of american firms in some areas such as mobile payments skeptics however point out that chinese stocks are frequently subject to speculative swings and that tech is a frothy sector in any case these investors would likely claim that both faang and bat stocks are overvalued setting aside opinions on the future of bat stocks let s take a look at these companies history and where their finances stand as of 2021 baidu bidu baidu co founded by robin li and eric xu in 2000 is the most popular search engine in china according to the company baidu s portfolio of products and services reaches over one billion devices each month baidu has been listed on the nasdaq since aug 2005 and was dual listed on the stock exchange of hong kong limited sehk in march 2021 41it offers an encyclopedia similar to wikipedia though editing permissions are more tightly controlled other services include maps social media and music the company also researches artificial intelligence and self driving cars 5as of aug 2021 baidu controls 76 91 of the domestic market share in the search engine industry 6 its market cap stood at 58 billion in sept 2021 7 the company brought in roughly 16 4 billion in revenue in fy2020 a slight decrease from 2019 s revenue of 16 5 billion 8robin li one of the company s co founders has served as ceo of baidu since 2000 9alibaba baba alibaba holding group ltd baba sometimes referred to as china s amazon is a multi faceted company comprised of core commerce cloud computing digital media and entertainment and innovation initiatives alibaba s e commerce firm operates via two main online portals taobao for consumer to consumer commerce and a business to consumer counterpart tmall 10the company also created alipay which provides payment other financial services for consumers and merchants that operate on its platforms according to the company alibaba was founded in 1999 by 18 individuals and led by jack ma a former english teacher from hangzhou china as of june 30 2021 annual active consumers for the alibaba ecosystem reached a milestone of over 1 18 billion including 912 million consumers within china and approximately 265 million consumers outside china 11as of sept 7 2021 alibaba group has a market cap of 476 96 billion 12 the company reported total revenue for fiscal year 2021 at 109 48 billion in us dollars a 41 increase from the year before which stood at roughly 78 98 billion 13daniel zhang has served as the company s ceo since 2015 14tencenttencent founded in 1998 in shenzen china is a multi faceted tech company whose platform offers numerous products and services including social media music web portals e commerce mobile games internet services payment systems smartphones and multiplayer online games tencent is also the owner of wechat a messaging service with more than 1 billion users per month 153the app supports a popular payments service as well as a number of other features leading fastcompany to call it china s app for everything 16 one notable multiplayer online game owned by tencent is clash of clans which boasts tens of millions of users 17as of sept 7 2021 tencent has a market cap of 646 74 billion 18 the company reported revenue of 74 69 billion in us dollars in fy 2020 and 58 46 billion in fy 2019 marking a 27 7 increase 19pony ma one of the company s co founders serves as the tencent ceo 20