Alibaba, the leading Chinese e-commerce behemoth, has today not only shared its third quarter earnings but also smashed analyst estimates. It might come as a major surprise for some but the company witnessed a major peak in Single’s Day sales. It also saw an uptick in their cloud and digital media ventures for this quarter.
Talking about the numbers, Alibaba has posted a net income of RMB 17.12 billion (approx $2.47 billion) on the back of total revenue of RMB 53.25 million (approx $7.67 billion). The revenue for the third quarter, ended in December 2016, has witnessed a humongous 54% year-on-year jump in revenues. The earnings for the same now stand at RMB 6.94 ($1.00) per share.
Talking about their blockbuster Q3 earnings, Daniel Zhang, CEO of Alibaba Group, says,
Our robust December quarter demonstrates the strength of the Chinese consumer and Alibaba’s ability to create value across our vast ecosystem.
This is a prominent increase in numbers for the company, something which analysts around the globe didn’t expect. The analysts predicted that net income would come to be around RMB 13.7 billion (approx $2 billion) and total revenue of RMB 50.4 billion (approx $73.5 billion). Alibaba, however, managed to beat all Wall Street expectations by a fairly good margin.
As for individual entities operating under the e-commerce giant, they’ve also shown a huge improvement, thus amounting to the final figure. The revenue for Alibaba’s core commerce business grew 45 percent YoY, amounting to a massive RMB 46.58 billion (approx $6.71 billion).
These marketplaces, namely T-Mall and Taobao, now have more than 493 million monthly users. The active buyer count for December’16 also stands at 443 million. The company even managed to break its Single’s Day record by selling goods worth RMB 120.7 billion (approx $17.79 billion) in a 24-hour window.
Alibaba witnessed a massive uptick in revenues for its cloud computing and entertainment business. The former increased 115 percent YoY to RMB 1,764 million (approx $254 million) while the latter increased 273 percent YoY to RMB 4,063 million (approx $585 million). There has also been a minor uptick in the number of paying cloud customers. They’ve grown from 651,000 in the previous quarter to 765,000 in the current one.
It has recently also been courted to provide cloud services to the Olympics until 2028. Under this partnership, the company will aid in the conceptualization of Olympic Channel, that will sell official Olympic merchandise online. It has also partnered with prominent brands like Samsung, Louis Vitton and other to help combat the flow of counterfeit items on its marketplaces.
With regards to the massive uptick in revenue and profit figures for each category, Alibaba is also increasing its revenue projections for their current fiscal year 2017. Talking about the same, Maggie Wu, CFO of Alibaba Group, says,
We reported another excellent quarter, with robust revenue growth of 54%. With three quarters of the year coming in ahead of expectations, we are adjusting up our 2017 fiscal year revenue guidance from 48% to 53% year-over-year growth.
The company is looking forward to extending its network in its homeland China as well as across the globe. After getting its grip online, the e-commerce giant, Alibaba, has already started sketching a strategy to expedite its offline presence. The company has already submitted its $2.6 billion bid for acquiring departmental store chain Intime. It is one of China’s prominent store chains and Alibaba is of the opinion that the amalgamation of online and offline commerce services can enhance the customer’s shopping experience.
Further, talking about the future prospects of the company, Zhang adds,
We are driving the age of ‘New Retail,’ which leverages big data and innovation to provide a seamless online and offline experience for nearly half a billion mobile monthly active users. This retail transformation will make it even easier and more efficient for brands and retailers to engage with these consumers anywhere, anytime.
