Alibaba's Q4 financial report: Taotian GMV double-digit growth, Alibaba Cloud's AI revenue triple-digit growth, and overseas e-commerce growth of 45%

Cover News

2024-05-14 19:04Posted on the official account of Sichuan Cover News

Alibaba's Q4 financial report: Taotian GMV double-digit growth, Alibaba Cloud's AI revenue triple-digit growth, and overseas e-commerce growth of 45%

Cover news reporter Meng Mei Fu Wenchao

On May 14, Alibaba Group released its Q4 and full-year results for fiscal year 2024. After a year of active transformation, Alibaba has returned to a healthy growth track: this quarter, Taobao and Tmall GMV grew by double digits, Alibaba Cloud's core public cloud product revenue grew by double digits, AI-related revenue increased by triple digits, and overseas e-commerce achieved strong year-on-year growth of 45%. This proves that the strategic direction of "user-first and AI-driven" and the investment strategy focusing on the main business have been effective, and have shown a positive momentum for the future.

According to the financial report, Alibaba Group's Q4 revenue was 221.874 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%, exceeding market expectations. In fiscal 2024, Alibaba Group's revenue reached RMB941.168 billion, and its adjusted EBITA profit increased 12% year-over-year to RMB165.028 billion.

Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group, said, "This quarter's results show that our strategy is paying off, and Alibaba is getting back on track to growth. By focusing on user experience, Taotian and its international e-commerce businesses both achieved double-digit year-on-year growth in GMV. We are also pleased to see the accelerated growth of our customers for AI products and related cloud computing revenues. We will continue to execute our strategic focus with a strong focus on capitalizing on growth opportunities for the future." ”

Taotian's "user first" strategy has been effective, with double-digit growth in GMV and order volume

During the quarter, Taotian Group continued to adhere to the "customer first" strategy and provided consumers with a shopping experience of "good products, good prices, and good services", and received positive feedback from consumers. According to the financial report, Taobao Tmall's quarterly number of buyers and purchase frequency grew strongly, driving online GMV and order volume to achieve double-digit year-on-year growth. Customer management revenue increased 5% year-over-year due to strong revenue growth from search and referrals. At the same time, the number of 88VIP members also achieved double-digit year-on-year growth, exceeding 35 million. This reflects the increasing willingness of consumers on the platform and the trust of users.

Product improvement and firm investment around user experience have driven Taotian back to healthy growth. In the past few months, Taotian has improved the user experience from the whole link, increased user retention and purchase frequency, and launched many new measures: strengthening the product supply advantage of "universal Taobao", launching the function of using first and paying later, refund only, adding a new store label system, free shipping and delivery to the village in Xinjiang, upgrading the rights and interests of 88VIP members, 618 taking the lead in canceling pre-sales, and restarting Taobao web version...... Behind the frequent actions is an in-depth understanding and satisfaction of consumer needs, and continuous enhancement of consumer attractiveness.

While upgrading the consumer experience, Taotian has also increased its support for platform merchants to help them operate with higher efficiency and lower cost. From 2024 onwards, Taotian will successively release 10 AI management tools, starting from April, "Business Advisor" and other free of charge, and Alimama will launch the "Whole Site Promotion" traffic operation solution to help potential good goods quickly explode, and the GMV of existing internal test merchants has increased by 2.97 times year-on-year, and the stickiness of the main business position of merchants continues to increase.

Alibaba Cloud's revenue quality continued to improve, and AI-related revenue accelerated by triple digits year-on-year

During the quarter, Alibaba Cloud's revenue increased by 3% year-on-year, of which core public cloud product revenue achieved double-digit year-on-year growth, and AI-related revenue growth accelerated, continuing to achieve triple-digit year-on-year growth. At the same time, Alibaba Cloud continued to be profitable, with Adjusted EBITA up 45% year-over-year.

The explosion of AI technology innovation and application has driven the growth of traditional cloud computing demand, and also brought new growth space for Alibaba. Alibaba Cloud is actively investing in its cloud computing product matrix, especially AI infrastructure, to meet the huge opportunities in the AI industry, and the demand from customers in different industries such as basic model companies, Internet companies, and financial services and automotive has grown strongly this quarter. Public cloud and AI-related products are expected to see strong revenue growth.

At present, Alibaba Cloud has established strategic cooperation with most of the leading Chinese large-scale model companies. On May 9, the first anniversary of the launch of Alibaba's self-developed large model Tongyi Qianwen, Tongyi Qianwen version 2.5 was released, and its score on the authoritative benchmark OpenCompass tied GPT-4 Turbo. At the end of April, the open-sourced 110 billion parameter model Qwen1.5-110B topped the HuggingFace open-source model list, and has been at the top level of the global open-source model.

Overseas engine accelerates, Alibaba International Digital Business Group's revenue increases by 45%

Alibaba's overseas related business continued to maintain a strong momentum, with Alibaba International Digital Business Group's revenue increasing by 45% year-on-year in the quarter, and overall quarterly orders for its retail platforms increasing by 20% year-on-year.

According to the financial report, the strong performance of Alibaba's overseas e-commerce is mainly driven by the growth of cross-border business, especially the Choice business of the AliExpress platform. AliExpress continued to deliver strong year-on-year order growth in the quarter, and the synergy with Cainiao in cross-border logistics further strengthened its competitiveness, with the 5-day and 10-day delivery delivery rates of cross-border parcels doubling year-on-year. In April 2024, Choice accounted for about 70% of AliExpress's overall orders. Alibaba's financial report shows that it will invest more resources in cross-border e-commerce, reaffirming its price power and customer value proposition of timely delivery to global consumers.

In terms of overseas and local e-commerce, Trendyol continued to maintain double-digit growth in orders, and in addition to Turkey, Trendyol further expanded its business to the Gulf region, becoming one of the most downloaded e-commerce apps in the Gulf region in the quarter.

During the quarter, Cainiao withdrew its IPO and continued to enhance synergy with domestic and foreign e-commerce businesses, provide differentiated and high-quality services, improve logistics efficiency and user experience, and continue to support Cainiao in promoting the construction of a global intelligent logistics network. During the quarter, Cainiao's quarterly revenue increased by 30% year-on-year due to the revenue from cross-border logistics fulfillment services that supported AliExpress. During the quarter, Cainiao has added 4 new countries to the coverage of high-quality logistics services from 5 to 10 days, covering a total of 14 countries.

At the same time, the operating efficiency of other business groups continued to improve. Local Life Group's quarterly revenue increased by 19% year-on-year, and its annual revenue was nearly 60 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 25%. In fiscal year 2024, Dawen Entertainment Group's revenue increased by 15% year-on-year and achieved a year-on-year narrowing of losses.

Market analysis believes that Alibaba has returned to the track of healthy growth, and its core businesses have shown accelerated growth momentum, which is the result of the effective active reform in the past fiscal year and the correct strategic direction of "user first and AI-driven", which is in the best formation and development state for the future, and has also made a good start to the new fiscal year. Alibaba continues to invest in core businesses such as Taotian, cloud, AI, and overseas, continues to improve the e-commerce user experience, focuses on resources to develop public cloud products, and maintains the strong growth momentum of overseas business.

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