LONDON — Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce giant, posted its slowest quarterly revenue growth rate since 2014.
Impacted by China’s continuous crackdown on the tech sector, and facing competition from the likes of JD.com, ByteDance and Kuaishou, which have doubled down on livestreaming selling, Alibaba Group’s revenue in the quarter ended Dec. 31 rose about 10 percent to 242.6 billion renminbi, or $38.37 billion.
Alibaba’s net profit plunged 75 percent to 19.43 billion renminbi, or $3 billion, in the period.
The income from operations fell 86 percent year-over-year, to 7.06 billion Renminbi or $1.11 Billion.
The China commerce retail business, which includes its core Taobao, Tmall, and other businesses, saw revenue rise 7 percent to 168 Billion Renminbi (or $26 Billion) from a year earlier.
Customer management revenue, a metric that tracks how much money merchants spend on ads and promotions on Alibaba’s sites, decreased by 1 percent year-over-year. Alibaba stated that the decrease was due both to slower market conditions and competition.
Cloud computing, Alibaba’s second largest source of revenue, was worth 19.5 billion Renminbi (or $3.06 billion), a 20% increase year-over-year.
Alibaba’s worldwide annual active customers grew 43 million in the last 12 months to 1.28 Billion (979 M consumers in China, 301 M overseas).
Alibaba’s shares closed down 6.9 percent in Hong Kong and fell about 5 percent in New York before the results were announced. The Hangzhou-based company’s share price have fallen about 60 percent in the past 12 months.
Despite the downfall, Daniel Zhang, chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba Group, said the group delivered steady progress “in a complex and volatile market environment.”
“We achieved positive momentum in key strategic businesses through a disciplined focus on capacity building and value creation to fuel our future growth,” Zhang added.
Maggie Wu, chief financial officer of Alibaba Group, called the 10 percent revenue growth a “healthy” result.
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