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Data Support | Pythagorean Big Data (www.gogudata.com)
At the beginning of 2023, Zhang Yong set the tone to advance.
From the beginning of last year to the end of the year, Alibaba (NYSE: ) made a series of organizational adjustments, and also proposed a new outlook from “fixed” to “progressive” in the new year.
The outside world is curious about how Ali, who has worked hard to accumulate strength for a whole year, will make progress in 2023.
Just in time, Ali’s new financial report is here.
On the whole, the consumer sector with Taobao and Tmall as the core is still the ballast stone business for Ali to achieve large-scale profitability, while cloud computing and Cainiao Network are the two core growth sectors in line with future trends.
The ballast stone business provides Alibaba with a safety cushion, and the growth business gradually grows into a new growth engine. The deep accumulation of cutting-edge technology and the belief in the integration of technology and business to open up new development space provide Alibaba with a future-oriented The foundation of competition.
01 The basic disk is stable
How does Ali’s basic disk perform?
Alibaba-SW (HK:) Group announced its results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023 (the fourth quarter of 2022 in the natural year): Quarterly revenue increased by 2% year-on-year to RMB 247.756 billion (the unit is the same below), and net profit in the third quarter was 456.46 100 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 138%; the net profit attributable to the parent company in the third fiscal quarter was 46.815 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 69%; under the Non-GAAP caliber, the net profit was 49.932 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12%.
Among them, the revenue of China’s commercial sector was 169.986 billion yuan, and the adjusted profit was 58.627 billion yuan.
The more eye-catching data is that the revenue of the international business sector was 19.465 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%, of which international retail revenue increased by 26%.
After offsetting the impact of cross-segment transactions, Cainiao’s revenue increased by 27% year-on-year to RMB 16.553 billion, and the growth rate continued to maintain growth.
Aliyun revenue increased to 26.693 billion yuan and 20.179 billion yuan respectively before and after offsetting the impact of cross-segment transactions.
Is there any change in the retention rate of core e-commerce users that everyone is concerned about? Statistics show that about 124 million consumers spend more than RMB 10,000 on Taobao Tmall annually, and the activity rate of these consumers is about 98% across the year, maintaining a high retention rate for several consecutive quarters.
It seems that the organizational structure adjustment made by Ali last year to improve user experience and satisfaction has achieved results. In the stock era, retaining old customers with spending power is the key.
Judging from the performance changes of the sector, Alibaba Cloud performed steadily, Cainiao Network continued to grow rapidly, the domestic e-commerce sector maintained its role as a ballast, and the overseas incremental market performed well. Taote, Taocaicai, Hungry, and Hema The operating efficiency of other businesses continued to improve, and losses narrowed.
02 Cloud computing is aggressive
In the digital age, it is a major trend to move everything to the cloud, and cloud computing is also a must for major manufacturers.
At the end of last year, Alibaba Cloud was raised to a new strategic level. CEO Zhang Yong personally took charge of the cloud business, and the top leader presided over the work. He can coordinate more resources to support the innovative development of cloud computing business, and the 2B business has great potential.
The signal behind the organizational change is extremely clear. The cloud business is the technological base of Ali and the core growth engine, which cannot be missed.
As the earliest contestant, Ali benefited from the early R&D investment, accumulated technology and seized the high point of the track, leading the industry for many years.
Back then, the phrase “Going to the cloud is to go to Alibaba Cloud” spread all over the country, and the popularity has not diminished to this day.
To put it vividly, the cloud is Ali’s spear, which has been attacking the city and expanding the territory.
In the early days, Alibaba Cloud grew at an astonishing rate. In order to offset the cross-segment transaction caliber calculation (deducting revenue from providing services for other Alibaba businesses), Alibaba Cloud’s revenue scale increased from 1.271 billion yuan in fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2022 (from April 2021 to the end of March 2022) 74.568 billion yuan, an increase of 57 times in 8 years.
After experiencing high growth, Alibaba Cloud’s growth rate has reached a new level.
From a market share and financial point of view, Alibaba Cloud’s performance is better than its peers.
According to the latest report of the international market research organization Canalys, in Q3 of 2022, the pattern of “China’s four clouds” has not changed, occupying a total of 80% of the market share, and Alibaba Cloud continues to lead with a market share of 36%. Turn losses into profits in fiscal year 2022, crossing the profit turning point.
In overseas markets, Alibaba Cloud continues to attack.
In order to speed up the deployment, Alibaba Cloud announced in September last year that it will invest 7 billion yuan in the next three years to build an international localization ecosystem, and will add 6 service centers in Porto, Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and other places. It is reported that in 2022, Alibaba Cloud will add 6 new data centers in overseas markets, located in Saudi Arabia, Germany, Thailand, South Korea and Japan. In the past three years, Alibaba Cloud’s revenue in overseas markets has increased by more than 10 times.
In terms of technology investment, Alibaba has increased its research and development funds year by year, and has disclosed that its annual technology investment exceeds 120 billion yuan. Because of this, Alibaba Cloud can adhere to its independent research and development route and compete with leading cloud manufacturers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Last year, Alibaba Cloud’s self-developed integrated big data computing platform and data warehouse product ODPS were selected as the 2022 World Internet Leading Scientific and Technological Achievements.
Looking back, from the adjustment of the organizational structure, the increase in capital R&D investment, and the layout of overseas markets, Alibaba Cloud’s foundation has been further consolidated. The competition in the cloud track is fierce, and Alibaba Cloud must use offense as defense to consolidate its leading position.
In the analyst conference call, Zhang Yong was further asked about Alibaba Cloud’s follow-up adjustments to the long-term or short-term strategy of the cloud computing business. Zhang Yong said:
“There are many concepts of cloud in the market. We still have to base ourselves on China and look at the world, demand ourselves with the highest standards, and pursue technological breakthroughs in core products. Cloud computing is an economy of scale, no scale is no economy, where does the economy behind come from? From technology Bonus. It really allows customers to use the cloud well, and at the same time, it also has sufficient economic benefits.”
He also further shared the direction of how Alibaba Cloud strengthens its market leadership: First, continuously improve the stability and security of cloud computing services, continuously optimize performance and reduce costs through technological breakthroughs; second, continue to build and prosper cloud computing thirdly, to provide customers with intelligent industry solutions together with partners; fourthly, as an intelligent collaborative work platform and application development platform, DingTalk, together with cloud computing, forms a cloud-nail integration, cloud Integrated services; Fifth, in the era when generative AI is launching disruptive breakthroughs, the support of computing power is essential. On the one hand, we will continue to build our own pre-training large models, and on the other hand, we will fully seize market opportunities , to provide good computing power support for the surging models and applications in the market.
03 Rookie takes off
If Alibaba Cloud is the infrastructure for data flow, then Cainiao Network is responsible for the logistics infrastructure.
Cainiao’s core competencies, onboarding business flow and downloading logistics, are Ali’s big logistics hubs connecting merchants, factories, and consumers, connecting production, distribution, circulation, and consumption.
In Ali’s ecological sector, it is like a strong shield, deepening the moat of e-commerce territory and resisting encroachment by peers.
Looking at more specific scenarios:
C-end users, after online shopping, whether it can be delivered, delivered quickly, and delivered to the door is the decision-making basis when placing an order.
For B-end merchants, the certainty of logistics performance and the cost performance of supply chain links are their focus.
How to persuade customers to place an order requires deep cultivation of business accumulation.
In recent years, Cainiao Network has been making concerted efforts on the B-end and C-end, such as increasing the construction of basic logistics and warehousing, door-to-door delivery, featured supply chain services, and international end-to-end logistics solutions. Improve consumer experience and logistics performance capabilities to help merchants reduce costs and increase efficiency.
One of the most prominent examples is that before Cainiao completed the construction of more than 70 Cainiao production warehouses in more than 30 C2M industrial belts represented by the Taote consumption scene, so that 80% of the products can be sold in 48% of the country except for remote areas. Delivered within hours.
During Double Eleven last year, Cainiao delivered more than 200 million parcels to its door, the highest in history.
From the perspective of performance growth, Cainiao has always maintained high growth, and its revenue in this quarter increased by 27% year-on-year.
Looking back on the past two fiscal years, in fiscal year 2022, after excluding segments, Cainiao’s revenue was 46.107 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24%.
In fiscal year 2021, after excluding related-party transactions of the group, Cainiao’s revenue will be 37.258 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68%. Achieve positive operating cash flow.
With such a growth rate, it is believed that after 3-5 years, Cainiao Network will most likely take up the banner of Ali’s new growth, drive e-commerce, new retail and other new economies to achieve coordinated upgrades, and provide the group with better multiplier effects and flywheel effect.
04 AI new blue ocean competition
How to maintain sustainable development force? Every business is thinking.
In the past, Ali relied on the foresight of its strategic capabilities, based on e-commerce business, and developed digital and real integration services such as cloud computing, becoming a provider of commercial infrastructure capabilities for the transformation of the real economy.
Times are changing, and customers are changing. Ali, who worked hard on his internal skills last year, “must change faster than this era.”
Where is Ali’s imagination? Warmer policies + vast overseas markets + new technology outlets.
In terms of policy, the platform economy is frequently blowing warm wind and the regulatory pressure has eased, which has loosened the constraints of Internet platform giants like Ali.
In terms of the market, the overseas market is vast and rich, and there is a vast hinterland to gallop in.
With domestic e-commerce dividends peaking, Ali has been expanding overseas markets. It once set a GMV target of 100 billion US dollars for the Southeast Asian e-commerce platform Lazada. Serving 2 billion consumers around the world in 2036″ is not a dream!
In terms of technology, new technology outlets and digital transformation are the cornerstones driving Ali’s growth.
The integration of data and reality and digital transformation are the biggest opportunities for Ali. The platform itself connects 1 billion consumers on the demand side, and connects tens of millions of merchants and million-level enterprises on the supply side. Ali can help small and medium-sized enterprises share the dividends of digitalization and accelerate the arrival of industrial transformation.
In addition, ChatGPT has made the entire technology circle crazy, and AI+cloud is sparking more sparks.
Some industry leaders bluntly said that generative AI similar to ChatGPT will change the game rules of the cloud market, and cloud services will leap from the digital era to the intelligent era. In the past, enterprises chose cloud vendors more based on basic cloud services such as computing power and storage. In the future, enterprises’ demand for cloud will focus more on intelligent services.
Alibaba is naturally prepared for the hot air.
It is reported that the company has already invested in the research and development of ChatGPT-like products. Dharma Institute and its partners also launched the only AI model community in China last year—ModelScope, backed by the computing power of Alibaba Cloud, forming a complete layout construction. Once the field of generative AI proves its commercialization prospects, these layouts can ensure that Ali will not miss the opportunity.
The picture is from the author
Zhang Yong said on the analyst conference call that China’s cloud computing has just begun. According to IDC data, the proportion of China’s IT spending is 1%, while that of the United States is 5%. The proportion of cloudification in IT is 15% in China and 21% in the United States. A change in these two variables can present a huge opportunity. What’s more, with the development of technology today, including the emergence of generative AI and other cutting edge technology just mentioned, including the VR experience discussed some time ago, it will bring huge demand for computing power—this is a geometric level. increase. As the world‘s leading cloud computing vendor, the game has just begun. (full text)