Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, recorded 208.2 billion yuan of sales in the first quarter of 2023, up 2% year-on-year.
Citing Alibaba’s January-March quarterly settlement announced the previous day, the media pointed out that it did not meet the above-expected median of 210.3 billion yuan.
Sales in China’s EC sector fell 3% as distribution transactions of Taobao and T Mall, which are major online sales, decreased.
However, overall sales increased slightly as logistics and overseas online sales increased.
Sales in the cloud sector were 18.6 billion yuan, down 2% from the same period last year.
Alibaba’s net profit and loss attributable to shareholders amounted to a surplus of 23.52 billion yuan, shifting from a deficit of 16.24 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Alibaba total sales for the fiscal year 2023 (April 2022-March 2023) reached 868.6887 billion yuan, up 2% from the previous year. The annual growth rate fell to the lowest since it was listed in 2014.
Net profit reached 72.5 billion yuan, up 17% from the previous year.
At the end of March 2023, the number of Alibaba employees was 235,216, down 8% from the same period last year.
China’s EC market is stagnant enough to have difficulty acquiring new customers as competition intensifies due to the emergence of the Chinese version of TikTok operated by the online sales app Pinduit and ByteDance.
Alibaba, which has been regulated and pressured by Chinese authorities for the past two years, announced plans to separate into six business sectors in March.
Alibaba plans to raise funds from outside and disclose its listing by businesses other than the EC sector.
On the 18th, Alibaba’s board of directors approved an agenda to completely separate Cloud Intelligence Group through stock dividends to shareholders. It plans to complete the listing within the next year.
According to Chief Financial Officer Xu Hong, the board also approved the external financing process for Alibaba International Digital Commerce Business Group.
Hamasheng Freshippo, the grocery division, has launched a new stock offering (IPO) process, and Cainiao, the logistics division, will start an IPO over the next year and a half.
