Text | Observe Jun
It's time to come or it's coming! Ali officially announced the data, the company's net profit plummeted by 96%, and an era is over!
Not long ago, Ali officially announced the 2024 Q1 quarter data, it should be said that this data is quite ugly, judging from the data, Ali's corporate net profit was 919 million yuan, a plunge of 96%.
As for the fact that the company's net profit plummeted, Ali's explanation is that the plunge was caused by these three factors, factor one, Ali has increased its investment in e-commerce business, involving three major areas, namely Taobao Tmall's core user experience, core public cloud products and AI infrastructure, and finally overseas e-commerce; Factor 2 is to grant rookie employees retention incentives; Factor 3: The market value of the listed company in which the investment is invested has declined, resulting in a decline in the net profit of investment gains and losses.
However, although Ali explained the plunge in corporate net profit, if we look back at Ali's business in recent years, we can clearly find that the era of Ali is indeed gone. Comparing Alibaba's revenue and net profit from Q1 2021 to Q1 2024, it can be found that Ali has maintained single-digit growth in all quarters except for 13.9% revenue growth in Q2 2023.
And the net profit is even more ugly, if you compare it with the net profit of 45.746 billion in the Q4 quarter of 2022, then Ali's net profit in the first quarter of this year can be regarded as an "ankle chop", which is even farther away from its peak results. As the most powerful e-commerce giant in China, at the peak, Ali looked back and could hardly see the second place, but time has passed, and now Ali is surrounded by opponents, and some opponents once ran in front of Ali, it can only be said that the speed of change in the Internet rivers and lakes is indeed too fast and too fast.
An era is over after all! Now Ali is no longer a well-deserved e-commerce boss in China. Then again, how did Ali get to where he is today? In my opinion, the reasons for this are actually complicated.
On the one hand, because Ma Yun stepped down, professional manager Daniel Zhang took the position, and although Daniel Zhang has rich experience in managing enterprises, he is not aggressive, and under his leadership, Ali's innovation power has decreased significantly, and more is to eat the old capital. During this period, Ali's opponents worked hard to develop and innovate one by one, coupled with the rise of live broadcast e-commerce, Ali's hegemony began to be gradually eroded.
Ali, on the other hand, got the center of gravity wrong. In the past five years, Ali has focused mainly on the enterprise side, that is, the merchant side, ignoring the rights and interests of consumers.
On the other hand, Ali's competitors Pinduoduo and JD.com, like Pinduoduo, directly made a refund only, and flattered consumers in every possible way, although there are many controversies about the service, but it is undeniable that this service has indeed succeeded in making Pinduoduo favored by consumers, so that now even Taobao, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms have begun to follow up one after another.
Speaking of which, some time ago, Cai Chongxin, a partner of Ali who came out again, also publicly said: Ali is lagging behind, and in the past few years, Ali has forgotten who his real customers are, so he will pay such a heavy price today.
The current Ali is no longer the Ali who expanded its territory and divided the e-commerce pattern back then. An era is over after all.