Original title: Interpretation of Alibaba Q3 financial report: blessing and disaster depend on each other, and the growth rate of revenue has reached a new low in recent three years. Source: Sina Technology
During the epidemic, Alibaba handed over a seemingly 'bright' financial report. For the quarter ended December 31, 2019, Alibaba's revenue reached 161.456 billion yuan, an increase of 38%. The net profit was 50.132 billion yuan, an increase of 62% compared with 30.964 billion yuan in the same period of last year.
However, the capital market does not 'recognize' this performance. As of the close, Ali's shares fell 1.76%.
Looking at the financial report, the halo of core e-commerce failed to cover up the shortcomings of other businesses, and some business trends fell into growth anxiety:
First, core retail is still the core of growth. In the past few quarters, its growth rate has always hovered between 40% and 55%, and the total revenue has continued to rise. However, even with the double 11 'Blessing', the revenue growth of 38% reached a new low in recent three years and fell below the 40% red line for the first time.
Second, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment businesses, which are given high hopes, are still in a state of loss. Among them, cloud computing broke 10 billion for the first time. Although it lost money, it narrowed slightly compared with the previous quarter; Big entertainment is still 'lagging behind', and the growth rate of 14% is difficult to change the decline.
The good news is that the monthly activity of Taobao tmall mobile terminal has reached 820 million, which also proves that it has achieved results in mining users in the sinking market. In addition, live streaming by anchors such as Li Jiaqi has also become an important means for Alibaba e-commerce to retain users.
Traditional e-commerce can not escape the bottleneck
According to the financial report, at least two business support services of Alibaba are lower than the revenue growth rate of 38%, including 16% commission income and 24% service income. Among them, the decline in the growth rate of commission income is more serious, reaching the low line level in recent quarters, coupled with the slowdown in the growth rate of overall revenue, which may mean that the traditional e-commerce model is difficult to escape the bottleneck period.
Of course, Ali is also expanding new models. Last year's double 11, its trading volume reached a record high of 213.5 billion yuan. Among them, Taobao live broadcast has played a significant role in improving performance and has become one of the fastest growing marketing means. According to the financial report, the transaction volume and the number of users generated by its live broadcast have more than doubled.
In addition to the live broadcast, the new retail format HEMA was also given high expectations, which was once regarded as a breakthrough in traditional business. In this quarter, HEMA is still expanding at a high speed, with nearly 200 stores. Previously, HEMA was once depressed. However, from the current profit margin, HEMA has jumped out of the low profit margin of 35% a year ago and returned to the rising track, and some profit margins have exceeded 40%.
However, for the advantages and disadvantages of this accelerated expansion, Li Yongjian, director of the Internet Economy Research Office of the Institute of financial strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that if the online order volume of HEMA Xiansheng accounts for more than 70%, the offline stores will no longer need too much display area, otherwise it will be very uneconomic to balance the labor and rental costs.
Sinking market still has dividends
It is worth mentioning that in this quarter, the number of mobile users of tmall Taobao exceeded 800 million for the first time, reaching 824 million, an increase of 39 million over September 2019.
This means that the demographic dividend of the sinking market has not disappeared. Prior to this, Ali has put poly cost-effective in the primary position of business breakthrough, and recently opened a primary entrance position in Taobao app.
The war to sink the market has never stopped. Liu Bo, general manager of Alibaba's grand gathering cost-effective business division, previously admitted in an exclusive interview with sina technology that many channels of pinduoduo do sink, and users infiltrate for the first time, 'for example, a new user is only helping with red envelopes, but he will bind accounts and cards, and receive red envelopes, which has opened up the basic links of many new users'. He believes that after friends help open the link, more users will transfer to the Amoy platform in the future, which is a good thing for Ali.
From this point of view, among the 39 million new active users, it is not ruled out that there is a lot of 'assistance'.
Another direction is Taobao live broadcasting. According to Jiang Fan, President of tmall, Taobao live broadcasting is becoming a new growth point of the brand, and more than half of tmall businesses have achieved transaction growth through live broadcasting.
Big entertainment business remains sluggish
Ali's entertainment business still seems to be in a slump.
According to the financial report, the revenue of digital media and entertainment business belonging to Alibaba entertainment section was 7.396 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14%.
Compared with the data of a year-on-year increase of 23% in the previous quarter, the big entertainment business returned to the low range again. In addition, the adjusted EBITA loss in this quarter was RMB 3.298 billion, compared with RMB 6.034 billion in the same period last year.
Alibaba also gave a corresponding explanation, saying that this is mainly due to Youku's stricter control of content expenditure, thereby reducing the cost of content.
It is worth mentioning that the average number of daily paying users of Youku increased by 59% year-on-year, which may be related to the joint binding and other marketing activities of 88vip members at the end of last year. Ali said that this is due to the increase of paying users who reach new paying users and choose automatic renewal during key promotion activities.
Although it has been at a loss, Ali has always maintained its enthusiasm for the sector.
Ma Yun once said that the 'happy section' represented by 'culture and entertainment' is an important strategic direction of Ali in the future. In June this year, Zhang Yong defined the No. 1 position of big entertainment in his letter, saying that he should focus on the close integration of various businesses of big entertainment and realize the integration of strategic investment business and financial system. From the outside world, big entertainment has gradually returned to Alibaba's C position. At this time, the loss narrowed year-on-year, which is more favorable for the positive development of the sector.
Influence and opportunity coexist under the epidemic situation
In the earnings conference call last night, analysts asked many questions about the impact of the epidemic.
Zhang Yong, chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba group, said that like all China's enterprises, Alibaba also encountered New Coronavirus's black swan event at the beginning of 2020. At present, the epidemic situation of New Coronavirus is continuing, which is having a major impact on China's economy and world economy, and inevitably brings challenges to the development of Alibaba's business and brings new historical opportunities.
"The epidemic continues. We will closely evaluate the impact of the epidemic on various businesses and take necessary business measures according to the changes of the situation," Zhang Yong said.
So far, Alibaba has purchased more than 40 million pieces of medical materials to Wuhan and other areas affected by the epidemic, with a value of 468 million yuan; The rookie green channel has delivered more than 26 million medical materials to Wuhan and other affected areas.
However, Wu Wei, chief financial officer of Alibaba, admitted that the impact of the epidemic on this quarter has two aspects: one is the direct impact of the epidemic, and the other is the support and funded projects given to businesses. Overall, this quarter will not rule out a significant slowdown.
Everything still needs time to prove.