Alibaba almost doubles sales and more than doubles profit

Profits almost tripled

The news that quarterly sales of Alibaba have
risen by 80% to 1.84 billion dollar (almost 1.4 billion euro) and that profits
have almost tripled to 642.2 million dollar (about 500 million euro), was
published in a document Yahoo! handed to the American exchange watchdog SEC.
The Chinese themselves do not communicate about their sales figures, but Yahoo! – that owns
24% of Alibaba – is obligated to do so as a listed company.

Alibaba itself does not sell goods, but it runs
internet platforms such as Taobao (C2C) and Tmall.com (B2C), a marketplace that
connects retailers and brands with online shoppers. The company gets paid via
commission on the sales made.

As largest e-commerce player of China, Alibaba
is in the best position to profit from the current internet boom in China:
between 2003 and 2011 internet sales have doubled each year and according to
McKinsey & Co sales will triple between 2011 and 2015 to 395 billion dollar
(about 300 billion euro).

At the end of 2012 China had over 564 million
internet users, 10% more than the previous year. The total value of all goods
sold by Alibaba this year, should be around 250 billion euro, according to
analysts.

Soon at the exchange?

The persistent super growth – between September
2010 and September 2011 sales of Alibaba also grew by 81% and the year after by
74% – is big news, because a public listing of Alibaba is written in the stars.

Billionaire Jack Ma, chairman of the Alibaba
Holding, said last year that a public listing within five years is a
possibility, but more and more analysts are predicting the IPO to happen this
year or maybe the next year. Alibaba would be worth about 62.5 billion dollar
(47.48 billion euro), as calculated by eight investment banks on behalf of
Bloomberg.