Photo/Shetuwang

May 28 (NBD) -- China TransInfo Technology (SZ:002373), provider of intelligent transport operation system services, announced on Monday that its shareholders and parties acting in concert agree to sell about 15 percent stake in the company to Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) for approximately 3.6 billion yuan (522 million U.S. dollars).

The deal would make Alibaba the second-largest shareholder of China TransInfo.

Also a day earlier, China TransInfo entered into a framework agreement with Alibaba's cloud computing affiliate Alibaba Cloud to deepen cooperation in the intelligent transportation and edge computing sectors.

"The news (of the Alibaba deal) comes as a surprise," so said an employee with China TransInfo to National Business Daily (NBD) as he and his colleagues hadn't heard of the news until the very day.

China TransInfo garnered 1.645 billion yuan in operation revenue and 153 million yuan in net profit in the first quarter of this year, representing an increase of 26.6 percent and 3.13 percent year over year, respectively.

Alibaba stated that within the following 12 months it will be considering whether to up stakes in China TransInfo by taking into account the latter's development and share prices as well as the overall situation of the stock market.

NBD noticed that China TransInfo signed a framework agreement with Alibaba's competitor Baidu last September, under which the smart transport system provider will join Baidu's autonomous driving platform Apollo to develop the on-board V2X (vehicle-to-everything) system for autonomous cars.

As the China TransInfo-Baidu agreement is valid for five years, China TransInfo's way of handling the cooperative relations with these two tech giants deserves attention. But China TransInfo couldn't be reached by NBD for comments with regard to this.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn