When reports surfaced this week of an internal memo detailing yet another new restructuring at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA.US, 9988.HK), investors cheered by bidding up the e-commerce giant’s shares by nearly 4% over the next few days. The move marked the latest dismantling of a breakup plan announced by the company two years ago, throwing it squarely into China’s growing “instant retail” wars that let consumers buy anything online and get it shipped to their homes within hours.

The original breakup plan in 2023 aimed to let Alibaba’s six main units operate more independently to make them more efficient. But its strategy shifted just a year later as longtime CEO Daniel Zhang departed, with reports in January 2024 that it was considering sales of consumer assets under Eddy Wu, who became the company’s new CEO in September 2023.

Both Zhang and Wu were trying to reverse a slide that saw Alibaba’s shares lose about half their value over the last five years. Wu started by dumping some of Alibaba’s brick-and-mortar retail assets, a relic of a “new retail” model that combined e-commerce and traditional retail, including its sale of its Intime department store chain and Sun Art grocery chain for about $3 billion combined.