Alibaba increases its growth forecast once more

Following an incredibly performant third quarter, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba upped its full fiscal year forecast, targeting a 55 to 56 % growth.

More than 10 billion euro in third quarter

Increased consumer spending in China, more customers on its Taobao and Tmall platforms, huge investments in its physical store network and a 100 % increase in its cloud services revenue: those are the four reasons for Alibaba’s 83 billion yuan (10.6 billion euro) third quarter turnover.

The board increased its full-year growth expectation to 49 – 53 % in November, but Jack Ma’s company experienced a wonderful quarter and that prompted it to increase its forecast once more. It now expects a 55 – 56 % growth for its full fiscal year, which runs until the end of March.

Alibaba Group, with 63,809 employees in December (compared to 59,572 in December 2016), also announced it acquired a 33 % stake in financial service provider Ant Financial, which is one of Jack Ma’s companies. It is one of the world’s largest “fintech companies” and also owns Alipay, which is PayPal’s Chinese counterpart.