For an ecommerce company with $36.67 billion in revenue for its most recent quarter, Alibaba Group Holding Limited showed a respectable year-over-year growth rate of 5%.
Alibaba owns the world’s two largest online marketplaces by gross merchandise value (GMV), Taobao and Tmall. Taobao ranks No. 1 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest such marketplaces by GMV. Tmall ranks No. 2. Both operate in China.
Eddie Wu, CEO, Alibaba Group
Alibaba revenue in fiscal Q3
The lion’s share of revenue was in Alibaba’s China retail ecommerce operations Taobao and Tmall, which grew combined revenue 1% to $17.43 billion. At Alibaba’s China B2B ecommerce site, 1688.com, revenue increased 23% to $747 million. Sellers on 1688 include include such U.S. manufacturers as Avnet, 3M and Stanley Black & Decker.
But Alibaba’s sharpest ecommerce revenue growth came in its International Digital Commerce Group, where retail commerce revenue surged 56% to $3.28 billion and wholesale climbed 8% to $740 million, for consolidated international growth of 44% to $4.02 billion.
Alibaba’s international retail commerce sites include Lazada, AliExpress, Trendyol and Daraz. The company conducts its international wholesale sales through its Alibaba.com B2B ecommerce site.
The IDCG is headed by its CEO, Fan Jiang. The IDCG ‘s chairman is J. Michael Evans, a former vice chairman of investment bankers Goldman Sachs who joined Alibaba Group last year as president.
Alibaba also reported an 86% revenue increase in its Cloud Intelligence Group and a 24% increase to $4.01 billion in its Cainiao Smart Logistics Network.
Investing to drive Alibaba’s growth
CEO Eddie Wu said Alibaba intends to drive stronger growth across its operations.
“Our top priority is to reignite the growth of our core businesses, ecommerce and cloud computing,” he said today in a statement about its fiscal third quarter. “We will step up investment to improve users’ core experiences to drive growth in Taobao and Tmall Group and strengthen market leadership in the coming year. We will also focus our resources on developing public cloud products and sustaining the strong growth momentum in international commerce business.”
Alibaba said Q3 net income fell 77% to $1.51 billion. It attributed the decline to “impairment of intangible assets of Sun Art and impairment of goodwill of Youku.”
Alibaba earnings
For the nine months ended Dec. 31, Alibaba reported:
- Taobao and Tmall Group China retail commerce revenue increased 5% to $45.94 billion.
- China wholesale commerce revenue increased 13% to $2.19 billion.
- Cloud Intelligence Group revenue increased 3% to $11.38 billion.
- International retail commerce revenue grew 62% to $8.36 billion
- Alibaba international B2B ecommerce revenue increased 6% to $2.22 billion.
In November 2023, Alibaba Group became the first Asian Internet technology company to join the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group of over 200 businesses, to support WBCSD’s drive to make global value chains more sustainable.
Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].
Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports.
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