Alibaba growth slows right before IPO

Larger than eBay and Amazon put together

In the quarter up to 30 September 2013, Alibaba
had a 51 % turnover growth compared to the year before, reaching 1.3 billion
euro. The quarter before that, the company managed a 61 % turnover growth
and going back another quarter, it even reached 71 %. Its turnover has
surpassed that of Amazon and eBay combined. It is 2 % of China’s gross domestic
product.

Its gross profit growth dropped to 58 %, compared to 74 % the
previous quarter. Gross profit reached 920 million euro.

Alibaba is “black box”

The slower growth is not good news for Alibaba, on the eve of an IPO. What
makes matters worse is that these numbers, which Yahoo releases with a
quarter’s delay, are the only source of financial information about the Chinese
ecommerce giant. “The company is a bit of a black box”, Brian Wieser (a Pivotal
Research analyst) told the Financial Times. The IPO would nevertheless be worth 44 billion euro at least.

Will Tao, from iResearch, thinks the slower growth is inevitable: “Every large company will eventually have to
accept slower growth.” The Chinese economy also slowed down, which
indubitably had its effect on Alibaba.

Alibaba refused to elaborate on the numbers, but a source close to the
company defended the numbers: “It is
still growing faster than any other company its size.”