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Alibaba (BABA) trades at 15x forward P/E and 0.32 price-to-sales despite Q3 cloud revenue growing 36% YoY and AI product revenue posting its 10th consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth. MercadoLibre (MELI) delivered 28 consecutive quarters of 30%+ revenue growth with full-year 2025 revenue up 39% to $28.89B and operating cash flow up 53% to $12.12B, yet the stock is down 17.2% YTD. Sea Limited (SE) tripled net income to $1.61B in 2025 while revenue grew 36.4% to $22.94B, but trades near $81 against an analyst target of $140.71, down 36.9% YTD.
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All three companies are experiencing deliberate reinvestment cycles that depress near-term earnings while their underlying e-commerce and fintech businesses compound at rates Amazon no longer achieves, creating a valuation disconnect between widely held expensive Amazon and these growth engines serving underpenetrated international markets.
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Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) continues to dominate financial headlines again, riding its cloud and AI narrative to a valuation that commands a premium most investors accept without question. But here is what the data shows about alternatives in the global e-commerce space.
The case against chasing Amazon at current prices is straightforward: you are paying a multiple that already prices in years of execution. With a market cap north of $2 trillion, the margin of error is thin and the crowded trade risk is real. Meanwhile, three global e-commerce platforms are sitting at valuations that imply the market has largely forgotten they exist. Even as their underlying businesses compound at rates Amazon hasn’t seen in years.
Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) just reported Q3 FY2026 results, and the stock dropped 7.1% on earnings day. The headline numbers looked ugly: non-GAAP net income down 67% YoY and free cash flow down 71% YoY to $1.62 billion. Yet, that reaction misses what is actually happening. Alibaba is in a deliberate, aggressive investment cycle. Cloud Intelligence Group revenue grew 36% YoY, AI-related product revenue posted its 10th consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth, and the Qwen app crossed 300 million monthly active users.
Read: Data Shows One Habit Doubles American’s Savings And Boosts Retirement
Most Americans drastically underestimate how much they need to retire and overestimate how prepared they are. But data shows that people with one habit have more than double the savings of those who don’t.
The stock now trades at a forward P/E of roughly 15x with a price-to-sales ratio of just 0.32. Analyst consensus target sits at $198.99 against a current price of $124.90. The market is pricing in permanent impairment, but the data suggests a temporary investment trough.
MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI) has delivered 28 consecutive quarters of revenue growth above 30%. Full-year 2025 revenue hit $28.89 billion, up 39% year-over-year. Operating cash flow reached $12.12 billion, up 53% YoY. The fintech segment alone grew 46% YoY, with a credit portfolio that nearly doubled to $12.5 billion.
The stock is down 17.2% year-to-date despite those numbers. The PEG ratio is 0.9, a figure that implies the market is not giving MercadoLibre credit for its growth rate. Latin American e-commerce penetration remains roughly half that of the U.S., UK, and China, meaning the runway ahead dwarfs what is already being executed. Mexico revenue grew 50% YoY in Q4, and Brazil’s grew 48%.
This is not a story that needs a turnaround, but one that needs patience.
Sea Limited (NYSE: SE) is the most glaring disconnect of the three. Full-year 2025 net income grew 262.6% year-over-year to $1.61 billion. Revenue hit $22.94 billion, up 36.4% YoY. Operating cash flow grew 53.3% to $5.02 billion. The stock is down 36.9% year-to-date, trading near $81 against an analyst consensus target of $140.71.
The Q4 EPS miss that triggered a 16%+ post-earnings drop was driven by a deliberate expansion of the Monee loan book, which grew 80.4% YoY to $9.2 billion while maintaining a non-performing loan ratio of just 1.1%. Shopee serves approximately 400 million active buyers across 20 million sellers. The PEG ratio is 0.6. The market is treating a reinvestment cycle as a fundamental breakdown.
Amazon is a fine business. It is also one of the most widely held, most analyzed, and most expensively priced names in the world. The three names above are growing at comparable or faster rates, serving billions of consumers in underpenetrated geographies, and trading at fractions of that valuation. Investors researching global e-commerce alternatives to Amazon may find Alibaba, MercadoLibre, and Sea Limited worth examining given the valuation divergence.
Most Americans drastically underestimate how much they need to retire and overestimate how prepared they are. But data shows that people with one habit have more than double the savings of those who don’t.
And no, it’s got nothing to do with increasing your income, savings, clipping coupons, or even cutting back on your lifestyle. It’s much more straightforward (and powerful) than any of that. Frankly, it’s shocking more people don’t adopt the habit given how easy it is.
