Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch. Our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Wednesday, February 7th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. Our top story so far.

Alibaba added a whopping $25 billion to its buyback program, but that failed to shore up shares in early trading as worries about revenue persist.

Alibaba said its board approved an increase of $25 billion to its repurchase program through the end of March 2027.

Following the upsize, the company has 35.3 billion available

for the next three fiscal years.

During the quarter ended December 31st,

Alibaba bought back

292.7 million ordinary shares, equivalent of 36.6 million

ADS for 2.9 billion dollars, and a total of 897.9 million ordinary shares for 9.5 billion dollars during

2023 as a whole.

Alibaba, once China's best contender to become a trillion dollar company, has been

facing competition from rivals such as

PDD. Ali Baba CEO Eddie Wu said our top priority is to reignite the

growth of our core business, e-commerce and cloud computing. We will step up investment to improve

users core experiences to drive growth in Taubao and T-Mall Group and strengthened market leadership

in the coming year. Among other active stocks, Chipotle Mexican Grill rose after a solid earnings topper.

A 15.6% increase in total revenue was driven by higher comparable restaurant sales, attributable to higher transactions of 7.4 percent

and an increase in average check of 1 percent. Digital sales represented 36.1 percent of total food and

beverage revenue.

Chipotle expects 2024 comparable restaurant sales growth in the mid-single digit range.

285 to 350 new restaurant openings are anticipated in 2024, which assumes developer, permit,

...