Alibaba records slow revenue growth

Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba recorded its slowest revenue growth for its quarter ending December 2021 due to the pressure from Beijing on China’s technology sector.

Its revenue came in at US$38 billion, an increase of 10 percent year over year and its income from operations was at US$1.1 billion, a decrease of 86 per cent year over year.

Annual active consumers of the Alibaba Ecosystem across the world reached approximately 1.28 billion for the twelve months ended December 31, 2021, an increase of approximately 43 million from the twelve months ended September 30, 2021.

This includes 979 million consumers in China and 301 million consumers overseas, representing a quarterly net increase of over 26 million and 16 million, respectively.

Its cloud segment revenue by 20% year-over-year US$3 billion and its international segment grew 18 percent year over year to US$2.5 million.

Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO at Alibaba Group said the company delivered steady progress this quarter as it continues to execute its multi-engine growth strategy in a complex and volatile market environment.

“We achieved positive momentum in key strategic businesses through a disciplined focus on capacity building and value creation to fuel our future growth. Our global annual active consumers grew at a solid pace, reaching 1.28 billion on the strength of a quarterly net increase of 43 million,” he said.

“We believe a clear ESG strategy is instrumental to Alibaba's future, and announced our goal to realise carbon neutrality in our operations by 2030 along with a commitment to an additional 1.5 gigatons of decarbonisation in 2035 by working with consumers, customers and partners across our ecosystem.”

Maggie Wu, CFO at Alibaba Group called the revenue results were “healthy”.

“As demonstrated by our new segmental disclosure, our continued investments in growth initiatives have seen tangible results. With confidence in the company's prospects today and over the long term, we repurchased approximately 10.1 million of our ADSs for approximately US$1.4 billion this quarter,” she said.