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Alibaba’s Sales Growth Plateaus Despite China’s Covid Recovery

(Bloomberg) -- Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s revenue grew at the slowest pace on record for the July-September quarter, underscoring how the e-commerce giant’s post-pandemic rebound is starting to plateau.Revenue for the three months ended September rose 30% to 155.1 billion yuan ($23.4 billion), meeting the 154.8 billion yuan average of estimates. Profit fell 60% to 28.8 billion yuan from the year-earlier period, when it booked a one-time gain from the acquisition of its stake in Ant Group Co. The sales gain may not be enough to reassure investors worried about the derailment of Ant’s IPO, which sparked a $64 billion sell-off Wednesday. The company’s American Depositary Receipts fell as much as 3.4% in pre-market trading.Alibaba had benefited from stronger sales in its home market, which had led the global recovery from Covid-19. Gross domestic product grew 4.9% last quarter, making China the world’s only major growth engine. The e-commerce titan is banking on more than a quarter of a million brands, increased discounting and technologies like livestreamed selling to draw consumers to its annual blockbuster Single’s Day shopping festival, which culminates next week.The earnings headlines were “mixed,” Mirabaud analyst Neil Campling said in written comments, adding that Tmall growth was slower and the number for mobile monthly active users was well below expectations.Click here for a live blog on the numbersAlibaba rallied 6.3% in Hong Kong Thursday, rebounding from the previous day’s losses. The shares have gained roughly 73% from their Covid-19-era lows in March and touched a record high in October when Ant’s IPO had been priced.Retail and institutional investors had flocked to the record $35 billion-plus IPO, betting that Ant will overcome high valuations, regulatory headwinds and rising competition to reshape the future of global finance. But authorities called a halt to the IPO on Tuesday in view of regulatory changes. Alibaba had subscribed to more than a fifth of Ant’s Shanghai offering and also received about 1.16 billion H shares, helping it retain a roughly 32% stake in the fintech giant.What Bloomberg Intelligence SaysAnt Group’s last-minute suspension of its IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai, after Chinese regulators met with company executives on Monday, suggests material changes to its business outlook that could impact its $320 billion valuation. Alibaba owns a 31% equity stake that could have been worth over $100 billion had the listing proceeded.\-- Vey-Sern Ling and Tiffany Tam, analystsClick here for the researchAnnual active consumers grew to 757 million in the September quarter, driving a 29% increase in its core commerce business, Alibaba said. The closely watched customer management revenue for China commerce rose 20% in the quarter.To capitalize on the boom in online groceries, the company last month paid about $3.6 billion to double its stake in Sun Art Retail Group Ltd., taking control of one of China’s largest hypermarts to try and fend off rivals like JD.com Inc. Other competitors are also challenging Alibaba’s pole position, ranging from upstart Pinduoduo Inc. to Tencent-backed Meituan Dianping.Read more: Magic Johnson Selling Gels Shows U.S. Brands Flocking to AlibabaAlibaba’s core commerce business should expand at a compound annual growth rate of 23% from 2021 to 2023, CGS-CIMB analysts including Lei Yang wrote. Growing regulatory scrutiny over Ant’s lending business shouldn’t exert a great impact on Alipay, the digital wallet underpinning the majority of transactions across Alibaba’s platforms, they wrote. Revenue for Alibaba’s cloud division jumped 60%, driven by demand from customers in the internet, finance and retail industries. The unit is forecast to turn profitable for the first time ever in the year ending March, Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu said earlier this year. That will be a milestone for the decade-old business, which competes with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corp. and Google globally and is fending off upstarts like Tencent Holdings Ltd. at home.Alibaba unveiled its newest business last quarter, a so-called smart factory that it’s been operating under wraps for the past three years. While still nascent, the company is betting that “new manufacturing” -- using consumer data and technologies to improve efficiency in production -- will help it reinvent China’s outdated factories the same way it modernized the country’s brick-and-mortar retailers.(Updates with analyst comment, details of earnings)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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