Joe Tsai, co-founder and chairman of Alibaba Group Holding, says Chinese consumer confidence is showing “early signs of growth” and the e-commerce giant will expand its core business this fiscal year. It is expected that the company will return to a growth trajectory.
“We have all seen some of the growth in the service sector during the May 1st holiday. And within our platform, [sales of] Some discretionary goods, such as apparel and electronics, are also actually growing,” Tsai said on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday after Alibaba announced earnings for the March quarter and fiscal year ending in March. .
“The growth is pretty good. Consumers are starting to reflect that spending appetite,” Tsai said.
“Therefore, although we are seeing some positive signs, it is still too early to tell as the macro environment is broadly affected by the weakness in the real estate sector,” he added.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Eddie Wu Yongming, who took over as chief executive officer of the domestic e-commerce division in December last year, said Taobao and Tmall Group's gross merchandise merchandise value (GMV) would “gradually return to healthy growth” during the fiscal year. ” I predict.
According to Alibaba, Taobao and Tmall Group achieved double-digit year-on-year growth in GMV in the March quarter.
“In the second half of the fiscal year, we will gradually introduce new monetization mechanisms aligned with new platform algorithms and product features that will further drive revenue. I am very confident that we can maintain this,” said Mr. Wu.
Regarding the increasing competition in China's e-commerce space, Wu said the company has “made very clear strategic choices regarding Taobao on how to deal with future competition.”
In cloud computing, which is one of Alibaba's key growth drivers, Wu said the division's “leading product portfolio, significant infrastructure investments and aggressive industry partner strategy.”
In addition to strengthening the integration of cloud services and generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the group improved the competitiveness of its cloud sector through price reductions for various services.
“We've seen customer demand for AI increase rapidly,” Wu said. “It has also stimulated growth in demand for traditional cloud computing needs, such as general computing, storage, and big data.”
The group also touted the synergies between Tongyi Qianwen's large-scale language models and cloud computing product portfolio.
“There is a natural fit between our Tongyi LLM and our cloud business,” Wu said, referring to the technology behind ChatGPT and other generative AI services.
Jiang Huang, head of Alibaba's international digital commerce group, said the business's rapid growth was the result of “aggressive investments in new markets,” which led to the division's losses last quarter. .
The company also announced plans on Tuesday for a preliminary listing in Hong Kong, which is currently expected to be completed by the end of August.
