For AliBaba, It Is About Mobile Payments

Photo Credit: hinglish Notes/Flickr.com

If there was any worry that the Chinese e-commerce player Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) would be impacted by the result of the Presidential election in the US, it has been laid to rest. Alibaba continues to outperform market expectations and deliver stellar growth. And now, it is shifting gears on its payment affiliate Ant Financial.

Alibaba’s Financials

Alibaba’s revenues for the third quarter grew an impressive 54% over the year to RMB 53.24 billion (~$7.7 billion), ahead of the market’s forecast of RMB 50.1 billion (~$7.3 billion). EPS for the quarter grew 43% to $2.57 billion, or $1 a share.

During the quarter, revenues from the core commerce section grew 45% to RMB 46.576 billion (~$6.708 billion). Cloud computing revenues increased 115% to RMB 1.764 billion (~$254 million). Revenue from digital media and entertainment increased 273% to RMB 4.063 billion (~$585 million) and revenue from innovation initiatives and others increased 61% to RMB 845 million (~$122 million).

Among key metrics, Mobile MAUs on its China retail marketplaces grew 43 million over the quarter to 493 million at the end of December. Annual active buyers on its China retail marketplaces grew 4 million to 443 million. The number of paying customers of its cloud computing business grew 18% to 765,000.

Alibaba’s Key Initiatives

Cloud computing is one of the big growth engines for the Alibaba. It has built up a large cloud ecosystem with over 60,000 reported developers and has more than 765,000 paying cloud customers. Overall, the cloud has 2.8 million total customers including marketplace merchants. Given Chinese regulations, it won’t be easy for foreign investors and businesses to achieve a worthwhile presence in the Chinese cloud market. Currently, large industry verticals and IT consumers in China are dominated by state-owned enterprises. Among other statistics, of the largest 100 web startups in China, 70 are using AliCloud. The service is operating at an annual run rate of more than $1 billion and analysts estimate that it will probably break even or turn profitable fairly soon. Alibaba believes that it could give Amazon some cause to worry even though it is currently the sixth biggest cloud vendor in the world. Analysts also estimate that Alibaba’s cloud opportunity is a $20 billion market and Alibaba is well geared to make AliCloud  grow into $65 billion-$70 billion in valuation over the next five years.