Published | Tiger Sniff Business Group

Author | Liu Ran

Title map | IC photo

Alibaba today (May 22) released the fiscal year Q4 (The first quarter of 2020 natural year) and the annual financial report ——

In fiscal 2020, Ali Group ’s revenue was RMB509.711 billion, an increase of 35% year-on-year; Q4 revenue from January 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020 was RMB114.314 billion, an increase of 22% year-on-year. Ordinary shareholders ’net profit was RMB 3.162 billion, down 88% year-on-year, which was lower than the market ’s expectation of 16.085 billion.

Although revenue growth has declined, Ali also released another more optimistic data: In the 12 months ended March 31, 2020, the consumer business GMV of Alibaba ’s digital economy Reaching RMB 7.053 trillion, it became the first company in the world to have sold 1 trillion dollars on the platform.

From the results of the entire fiscal year, Ali is still a big man, and if you only look at the results of the quarter, Ali ’s ease and difficulty as a giant have been fully demonstrated.

Tough start of the year

Ali bears the brunt of the impact of this black swan on the e-commerce platform in the first quarter of 2020.

In the overall revenue, Alibaba ’s Q4 core business revenue was 93.865 billion yuan, an increase of 19% year-on-year, and the growth rate also fell. You must know that in the last quarter, Q4 core e-commerce revenue was 141.5 billion The year-on-year growth rate remained at 37.6%.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the growth rate of e-commerce retailing has been significantly affected by the epidemic. 2020 Q1 (first quarter of natural year) , the online retail sales of physical goods nationwide only increased by 5.9% year-on-year There are many uncertain factors, and the advertising of merchants has decreased. The e-commerce business has always been Ali’s core business and the core driving force for revenue growth. Under the epidemic, Ali e-commerce with the platform as the main body naturally cannot escape the decline in growth rate.

Alibaba ’s core business revenue data

In the financial report, Ali explained the reason for the decline in the growth of its main business-Tmall Online Tangible Goods GMV (excluding unpaid orders ) an increase of 10% year-on-year, rapid consumer goods (“FMCG”, including daily necessities and household goods) growth and elasticity of consumer demand Electronic products increased by approximately 25% year-on-year, but were offset by negative growth in other major categories such as clothing accessories, home decoration and auto parts.

The international retail market should be affected by the outbreak. The financial report shows that AliExpress ’s revenue growth slowed significantly year-on-year, mainly due to the interruption of supply chain and logistics, which had a negative impact on the growth of GMV sales from North America, South America and Europe. Lazada has suffered some negative effects in some countries / regions and continues.

For future expectations, the financial report stated that Ali ’s domestic business growth has started to recover in March, and Tmall ’s online physical commodity transaction totals Orders) rebounded strongly in April and further “improved” in May. However, for the international business (accounting for 7% of total revenue in fiscal year 2020) , “the time and pace of recovery is still uncertain.”

Compared with the overall performance, it is more optimistic that the “home economy” broke out again during the isolation period, which still brought an increase in the number of users of Ali.

In March 2020, Alibaba ’s mobile retail users in China ’s retail market reached 846 million, an increase of 125 million from March 2019; for the 12 months ended March 31, 2020, the annual active consumers reached 726 million , An increase of 72 million compared to the 12 months ended March 31, 2019. In addition, Alibaba’s digital economy will have 960 million active consumers worldwide in fiscal 2020.

And when Ali ’s core e-commerce business was at a low point, its cloud computing business ushered in a new highlight.

In the quarter, Alibaba Cloud ’s revenue was 12.217 billion, an increase of 58% year-on-year; Alibaba Cloud ’s annual revenue exceeded 40 billion , an increase of 62% from the previous year ’s 24.7 billion revenue, and, Morgan Stanley gave the latest valuation of $ 77 billion. The financial report explained that this was mainly due to the increased revenue contribution of Alibaba Cloud public cloud and hybrid cloud services.

In other businesses, in the Q4 quarter, Ali ’s digital media and entertainment business revenue was 594 million, an increase of 5% year-on-year; FY 2020 increased 12% year-on-year. The reason for the slow growth is that “the industry is rationalizing and strict regulatory review of content.” Ali’s innovative business and other revenues were 228 million, a year-on-year increase of 90%.

Even if the growth is not impressive, Ali ’s costs are still increasing.

The total cost of Q4 in fiscal year 2020 was 72.5 billion yuan, an increase of 30% from the same period of last year ’s 55.6 billion yuan. Alibaba ’s total cost of Q4 accounted for 64% of total revenue, compared with the same period last year. 60%; the total cost is 34.681 billion, an increase of 19% year-on-year (29.923 billion yuan in the same period last year) . Among them, the development cost for the quarter was 10.587 billion yuan, an increase of 22% year-on-year. (Same period last year was 8.659 billion yuan) ; sales and marketing expenses were 121.79 100 million yuan, an increase of 26% year-on-year

Ali on the “wind outlet”

Ali ’s overall results did not outperform the market in a special period, but new stories such as Taobao live broadcast, Hema, etc., which have been gaining momentum, have been hoped to bring new volume.

The relevant data has been reflected in the financial report- In the Q4 transcript, the number of daily active merchants using live broadcast on Taobao live broadcast increased by 88% year-on-year. For the new marketing method that has been touted, Zhang Yong made a relatively conservative evaluation in the conference call after the announcement of the financial report. Zhang Yong affirmed the value of Taobao live broadcast, but no It’s different from pouring a bowl of “cold water” into the hot and live broadcast everywhere ——

In the long run, (live broadcast) still depends on whether the entire commercial value can be effectively realized. Will the users brought by one-time sales and large-volume sales be able to continue to operate in the future, rather than just one-time consumption? The reason why the merchant is willing to pay a large amount of promotion cost is because it is the replacement of the channel cost and promotion cost in the past, but more importantly, he is able to precipitate such users and operate in the long-term user life cycle.

“We don’t think of live streaming as an independent business form and sales form, we see it as part of the overall consumer operation.” Zhang Yong said.

Obviously, The lively phenomenon in which everything can be broadcast live can last for a few days, and how long the peak of Taobao live broadcast remains to be tested.

In addition to Taobao ’s live broadcast, the box horses that had announced the “Double Hundred Plan” and the nails and rookies that had a strong presence in the epidemic appeared in the financial report: The contribution of GMV purchased online to the total revenue of box horses It accounted for 60%, an increase of 10 percentage points year-on-year. In March, the average daily active users of Dingding Working Day reached 155 million; the average daily number of parcels handled by Cainiao Inn increased by more than 100% year-on-year.

Now that the epidemic is over, the “same city retail”, which mainly focuses on fresh food retailing, is likely to become the focus of Ali’s next effort. According to “ LatePost , in mid-April The supermarket business group has been upgraded to the same city retail business group. According to insiders from Ali, the same city retail business group has risen to one of the No. 1 projects focused on by Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong.

“In Ali, there are the expressions of” regional retail, local retail, and same-city retail “, which correspond to the nationwide Taobao Tmall, people-centered 3