E-commerce giant Alibaba, who was heavily fined 18.2 billion yuan a month ago, yesterday night released results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021 (the first quarter of 2021 natural year) and for the whole year. Affected by huge fines, Alibaba handed over a quarterly loss for the first time since listing in the United States in September 2014, with an operating loss of 7.654 billion yuan.

The capital market responded quickly, and the share price of Alibaba plunged 6.28% on that day.

On the other hand, Alibaba's main business is still relatively robust: in 2021, the global annual active consumers reached 1 billion, and the GMV of Alibaba ecosystem reached 8.119 trillion yuan; in the Chinese retail market, the GMV growth of Taobao accelerated in the fourth quarter, and the GMV exceeded 500 billion yuan in Taobao Live fiscal year. In addition, in terms of new business, Aliyun and Cainiao still maintain growth, while Ant Group brought 19.693 billion yuan of investment income to Alibaba Group in fiscal year 2021.

In the fourth quarter, Alibaba attributed to common shareholder profits, such as excluding the impact of antitrust fines and a number of other items, non-GAAP net profit was 26.216 billion yuan, an increase of 18% over the same period last year.

Core e-commerce revenue maintains rapid growth

Alibaba Group's revenue from core e-commerce in the first quarter of 2021 was 161.365 billion yuan, an increase of 72% over 93.865 billion yuan in the same period last year. Core e-commerce income accounted for 86% of Alibaba's total income.

As the fourth quarter of each natural year is the peak season for the retail industry, Alibaba's core e-commerce revenue has declined from the previous quarter, but it is still up significantly from the year-on-year growth rates of 19%, 34%, 29% and 38% in the four quarters of last year.

In terms of the number of consumers, as of March 2021, Alibaba China Retail Market Mobile had 925 million monthly active users, an increase of 23 million in a single quarter, the highest in three quarters compared with the previous quarter, but the overall growth rate has been weak.

These figures are still supported by the sinking market that Alibaba has focused on laying out in recent years. The financial report shows that about 70% of the new annual active consumers come from less developed regions, and the annual active consumers of Taobao special edition exceeded 150 million in the 12 months ended March 31, 2021. At the same time, Alibaba said in the financial report that based on Taobao special version of the clear cost-effective proposition, as well as the expansion of the selection category, it has an ideal user retention rate.

When Alibaba announced his financial results last quarter, he had just been placed on file for investigation by the General Administration of Market Supervision for suspected monopolistic acts such as "choosing one of the two". During the earnings call at that time, Zhang Yong, chairman of Alibaba Group and CEO, said, "it has actually become the norm for merchants to operate on multiple platforms and websites, and flagship stores actually have their own channels and third parties to operate on other platforms, which is a reality. At the same time, Zhang Yong also insisted, "although there is the possibility of multi-platform operation, we have always been the main position for all businesses to operate, which is also our basic fact." "

In April this year, the boots fell to the ground. The result of the investigation said that Alibaba Group's act of "choosing one of the two" excluded and restricted the competition in China's online retail platform service market, hindered the free flow of goods, services and resource elements, and affected the economic innovation and development of the platform. it infringes upon the legitimate rights and interests of the merchants on the platform, harms the interests of consumers, and constitutes a prohibition in Article 17, paragraph 1 (4) of the Anti-monopoly Law. The abuse of dominant market position that the counterpart of the transaction can only trade with it.

Alibaba responded by saying, "sincerely accept and resolutely obey." "

However, it can be seen from the financial report that although pinduoduo pursues the momentum ferociously in terms of the number of annual active users, Alibaba's e-commerce business is still in the absolute leader position. Take GMV as an example, the merchandise transaction volume (GMV) of Alibaba's ecosystem in fiscal year 2021 was 8.119 trillion yuan, which is 20.7% of the total domestic retail sales of consumer goods of 39.1981 trillion yuan in 2020.

The stock is the king when the scale reaches its peak.

For Chinese Internet companies, user increment has always been the most important indicator of business performance, in short, the two words are: scale, traffic. But for the giant companies represented by Alibaba and pinduoduo, because the total number of domestic Internet users is limited, how to cultivate and make good use of stock users and explore greater possibilities in them when they have touched the bottleneck of 1 billion? is the key to open the door to the next era.

According to the financial report, consumers spent an average of 9200 yuan in Alibaba's Chinese retail market in fiscal year 2021, ranking first among e-commerce at the same level. In addition, people of all consumption levels in China's retail market show a high retention rate.

During the Singles Day holiday last year, the refined operation of the stock users was clearly reflected: from the pre-sale, double 11 began at zero on October 21, for a total of 22 days; according to the official order payment time, it was divided into two waves, November 1-3 and November 11, and the discount intensity of the platform and merchants was the same in these two periods. Compared with previous years, small and medium-sized businesses get more attention from consumers, and the longer activity cycle also provides opportunities for businesses to launch new products.

And the most popular live broadcast, community group buying two major new areas of e-commerce, Alibaba or has maintained the lead or is making efforts to catch up with the first mover.

The financial report shows that Taobao live streaming has maintained rapid growth in fiscal year 2021, with GMV exceeding 500 billion yuan in the whole fiscal year. According to the financial results released by its main competitor Kuaishou, the total value of merchandise transactions in Kuaishou e-commerce for the whole of last year was 381.2 billion yuan.

In terms of community group buying, non-e-commerce companies such as Meituan and Didi entered this market one after another last year. Alibaba revealed in the financial report that the company established a new business group in early 2021 to integrate the resources and capabilities of Alibaba's ecosystem and accelerate the business growth of the community business platform. Alibaba said his community business platform plans to cover the mainland market extensively in the next 12 months.

Another noteworthy is that Alibaba announced a new figure in this financial report, that is, the global annual active consumers of Alibaba ecosystem exceed 1 billion, of which 891 million come from China's retail market, local life and digital media and entertainment platforms, and about 240 million come from overseas. This means that compared with other pure e-commerce platforms, local life in Alibaba's system as well as digital media and entertainment platforms will bring users more choices.

Wu Wei, chief financial officer of Alibaba Group, said: "We plan to use all incremental profits and additional capital investment in fiscal year 2022 to support platform merchants, as well as to invest in new business and key strategic areas. This will help us to increase the consumption share of consumers and enter new potential markets. "

Zhang Yong said at the financial report meeting that how to turn annual consumers into monthly purchasing users or even day purchasing users, "there is great potential, and how to increase the frequency is an important perspective." "

The ants haven't fallen yet.

Alibaba owns 33% of Ant Group, and the performance of Ant Group is also the focus of attention in the financial report.

The impact of the suspension of listing was reflected in Alibaba's financial report last quarter. Alibaba's operating profit in that quarter was 13.634 billion yuan, down 33% from the same period last year, mainly due to an increase of 15.753 billion yuan in share compensation expenses related to equity awards granted to employees by Ant Group.

Shock waves continue to hit, and after the end of Singles Day last year, Ant announced the appointment of Vice President Li Chen as the head of group compliance, reporting directly to Hu Xiaoming. Zhang Yong said at the World Internet Conference Forum: regulation is very necessary to ensure a more orderly and healthy development of the Internet and the digital economy, and only sustainable and healthy development will bring more innovation to let a hundred flowers blossom.

On December 15 last year, ants spoke out publicly for the first time. Jing Xiandong's speech at the fourth China Internet Finance Forum was called "cautious". "the recent suggestions and expectations of ants in society, including a lot of criticism, are the precious wealth of ants, and we listen attentively. Conduct a comprehensive self-examination carefully. "subsequently, Alipay took the initiative to remove the deposit products of a number of banks and will no longer sell them. A few days later, the ant lowered the quota for young users. The ant responded by advocating more rational consumption habits among young people.

Just a few days after the antitrust regulator fined Alibaba, Ant Group announced that it would apply for the establishment of a financial holding company as a whole to bring all financial business under supervision: first, to correct unfair competition in payment business. disconnect Alipay from other financial products such as "spending" and "borrowing", and correct violations such as embedding credit business in the payment link. The second is to break the information monopoly, operate personal credit information business under license in accordance with the law, and collect and use personal information in accordance with the principle of "legality, minimum and necessity". The third is to apply for the establishment of a financial holding company as a whole, and all institutions engaged in financial activities are brought into the financial holding company to accept supervision, and the "borrowing" and "spending" are all incorporated into consumer financial companies; the fourth is to strictly implement the requirements of prudent supervision, conscientiously rectify and reform illegal credit, insurance, financial management and other financial activities, and control high leverage and risk contagion; fifth, control the liquidity risk of important fund products and take the initiative to reduce the balance of Yu'e Bao.

The latest news about ants is that Hu Xiaoming resigned just 15 months after taking over as CEO, the shortest CEO tenure in the company's history.

In the financial report just released, Ant Group brought 19.693 billion yuan of investment income to Alibaba Group in fiscal year 2021. According to a simple calculation, Ant Financial Services Group made a profit of 59.6 billion yuan in the 2021 fiscal quarter from April 2020 to March 2021.

However, it is worth noting that there will be discrepancies in the statistics of this data in accordance with the US GAAP accounting standards, and the statistical cycle may be the natural year of 2020.

According to the prospectus, Ant Group achieved operating income of 65.396 billion yuan, 85.722 billion yuan, 120.618 billion yuan and 72.528 billion yuan respectively in 2017, 2018, 2019 and January-June 2020, with net profits of 6.95 billion yuan, 667 million yuan, 16.957 billion yuan and 21.234 billion yuan, respectively.

Before the suspension of listing, the profit from January to June in 2021 was 21.2 billion yuan. if you make a simple comparison, Ant Financial Services Group recorded a profit of 59.6 billion in fiscal year 2020. At present, the profit has not been significantly affected by the listing storm. But the real impact of the ant business in 2021 will require Alibaba's earnings data for the next two quarters to be more accurate.

On the day of the release of the results, the official website of the central bank announced the decision to renew the "payment business licenses" of 27 non-bank institutions, with the exception of three UnionPay companies suspending the renewal to the central bank for integration reasons. the other 24 payment licenses, including Alipay and Tenpay, were successfully renewed.

Emerging businesses continue to grow

The emerging business represented by cloud computing has always been highly expected by Alibaba. Revenue from cloud computing business rose 50% year-on-year to 60.12 billion yuan in fiscal 2021, according to the financial report. According to the report of Gartner in April 2021, Alibaba Group ranked the third largest in the world and the first in the Asia-Pacific region in the global IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) market in 2020.

In this regard, Zhang Yong said that he will continue to increase investment in the field of cloud computing. "the investment will not only involve the cloud, but also in science and technology, which will benefit the growth of Alibaba's domestic demand and the progress of globalization." "

Alibaba said in the financial report that he continued to increase investment in digital infrastructure (smart logistics and cloud computing) and new retail (mainly including Hema, Tmall supermarket, community business platform and Taoxianda), local life services, Lazada, Cainiao network and other new businesses.

With the rapid development of Polar Rabbit this year, the competition in logistics is becoming more and more fierce. Cainiao network continued to grow. In fiscal year 2021, excluding the income from related transactions with Alibaba Group, Cainiao achieved an external income of 37.258 billion yuan for the whole year, an increase of 68% over the same period last year. External income in the fourth quarter was 9.959 billion yuan, an increase of 101% over the same period last year, realizing operating cash flow in the fiscal year.

According to the financial report, Cainiao's growth mainly comes from the incremental logistics market, including new services such as global logistics and intelligent supply chain: in March 2021, the average daily package volume of Cainiao's global parcel network exceeded 5 million.

Lazada recorded triple-digit year-on-year growth in orders for the fiscal year and quarter ended March 31, 2021, and AliExpress achieved strong user and GMV growth in fiscal year 2021. In the three months ended March 31, 2021, cross-border and global wholesale business revenues increased by 59% compared with the same period in 2020.

In fiscal year 2021, the number of merchants in ele.me increased, the profit per unit improved compared with the same period last year, and the average daily paid membership in this quarter increased by about 40% year-on-year.