Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China’s biggest e-commerce firm, warned on Thursday investments in its delivery business would keep pressuring profits even as it reported its strongest-ever quarterly revenue growth, largely in line with estimates.
US-listed shares of Asia’s most valuable public company rose early on Thursday but then erased gains to end the day down 3 per cent. While Alibaba makes money from its core businesses, including online marketplaces Tmall and Taobao and payment platform Alipay, it also has far-flung investments in sports content, microchips and facial recognition technology.
“As Alibaba continues to invest in New Retail initiatives, the consolidation of lower margin businesses such as Cainiao, Ele.me, and Lazada is shifting the long-term margin profile of the core business,” Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note.
“We expect management’s ongoing focus on New Retail market share will continue to be a profitability headwind for the foreseeable future,” said Sebastian, cutting his price target on the stock by US$5 to US$215.
In April-June, Alibaba’s gross margin was 11 per cent versus 29.2 per cent a year earlier, the lowest since the company’s 2014 stock exchange listing. Profit margins at Alibaba are typically well above 20 per cent.
On Thursday, the company said it had formed a holding company for its food delivery platform Ele.me and food and lifestyle services firm Koubei, for which it had received over US$3 billion in new investment commitments, including from SoftBank Group Corp and Alibaba itself.
Quarterly net profit at Alibaba, led by China’s second-richest man Jack Ma, plunged 41 per cent, hurt by a one-time charge for stock-based compensation paid to employees to account for a jump in valuation of its affiliate Ant Financial.
Without the charge, Alibaba said its net income would have risen by 33 per cent from the year-ago period. Excluding one-off items, the company earned 8.04 yuan per share, or US$1.22 per share, missing the average estimate of 8.15 yuan per share. Channel NewsAsia
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