Alibaba Group has raised its share buyback programme to $25 billion, which is its second expansion in less than a year to place stocks that have been hammered due to slow growth. The announcement marks an increase from its earlier plan to buy back $15 billion shares. The companies’ shares advanced to 4.5 per cent in Hong Kong after the announcement.

Alibaba said it had already re-purchased about $9.2 billion of its shares. The current programme will be effective for two years till March 2024. “The upsized share buyback highlights our confidence in Alibaba’s long-term, sustainable growth potential and value creation,” Alibaba Group’s Deputy CFO Toby Xu said.

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The company has been under pressure since the year 2020, when Jack Ma publicly criticised China’s regulatory system. Authorities after that stopped the planned IPO of Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Group and later fined $2.8 billion for anti-competitive behaviour. The latest buyback plan comes amid a stock rally in the past few days after Chinese Vice Premier Liu said that Beijing would launch more measures to boost the economy and favourable policy steps for capital markets.