Alibaba’s global ‘new retail’ proposition helps revenues rise 56% as it makes investment into Ant Financial
Alibaba has announced its revenues rose 65% year-on-year, to US$12.8 billion, during the December quarter of 2017, urging the company to increase its estimates for 2018 performance.
Alibaba posts better than expected quarterly results
Alibaba says the strong results are due to the increasing popularity of its 11.11 festival, as well as its global focus on ‘new retail.’
Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer of Alibaba Group, said: “Alibaba had another great quarter driven by the continued strength of the Chinese consumer and the wide and innovative range of services we provide for merchants and consumers. We are excited by the continued momentum in New Retail, which came to life during another record-breaking 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. We expanded the scale and footprint of our New Retail initiatives with the vision of delivering true convergence of the online and offline consumer experience through mobile and enterprise technology.”
The Chinese internet giant now expects to hit a 55-56% revenue increase for full-year 2018 results, up from a 49-53% prediction made in November 2017.
Alongside the results, it also announced a more permanent relationship with Ant Financial, which is the parent company to Alibaba’s payment service Alipay. Alibaba will now hold a 33% equity interest in the company, terminating an agreement that saw Ant Financial pay royalty and technology service fees in an amount equal to 37.5% of its pre-tax profits to Alibaba.
In terms of users, Alibaba continues to see growth domestically, even without continued growth into new markets. According to the announcement, annual active consumers on its China retail marketplaces reached 515 million, up 27 million and marking the largest increase for 12 quarters. Its mobile active users also increased by 31 million between September and December 2017.
Alibaba's global competitors Amazon and Google-parent company Alphabet also posted their latest financial numbers this week with revenues rising 23% and 38% respectively.