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[12.27] Morning Round-Up: Credit China Fintech Moves into Southeast Asia

Here are today’s top ecommerce headlines.

1. Credit China FinTech to establish Southeast Asia headquarter in Singapore in Q1 2017

Credit China FinTech Holdings Limited, a leading integrated fintech service provider in China, has revealed its plans to speed up the expansion of fintech business overseas.

The company has announced that it will establish Southeast Asia headquarter in Singapore by the end of the first quarter of 2017. Credit China FinTech said that it aims to bring its operating experiences in China and deploy them to other developing economies across Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Read the rest of the story here.

2. Vietnam’s MobiFone launches new mobile payment app

The app lets customers – pay with a mobile phone using QR codes at participating locations, reload their MobiFone cards, check MobiFone account balances and available credit, and view transactions from the last 90 days. MobiFone Next is special because it’s the first digital payments solution that benefits both consumers and merchants, said company representatives.
Read the rest of the story here.

3. Youku ready to add viewers’ data to help Alibaba refine online shopping customers’ profile

 Youku Tudou Inc, operator of China’s most-watched video streaming service with 30 million paying viewers, said it’s poised to complete the integration of its subscribers’ data into the e-commerce platforms of its parent Alibaba Group Holdings.

The combination of Youku-Tudou viewers with Alibaba’s online shopping customers will give Alibaba, which also operates a cloud computing business, the data to construct more precise profiles of its customers, enabling relevant advertising to be pushed to them to spur their retail spending.

Read the rest of the story here.

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Alibaba Reports $4.8B in Revenue Q2 2016 But Net Income Drops 76% YoY

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Alibaba saw record growth in Q2 2016 as the company’s Chinese retail marketplaces surged and revenue from its users on mobile overtook that of desktops for the first time.

The ecommerce giant reported revenue of $4.8 billion (RMB 32.2 billion), which is a 59% increase year-on-year — the highest growth since Alibaba went public in September 2014 in the largest US IPO in history.

While revenue growth was undoubtedly the highlight for Alibaba executives, the company’s net income dropped 76% year-on-year to $1.1 billion. Alibaba did note that non-GAAP net income increased 28% over the same period, while operating profit rose 71%.

Alibaba broke out increased financial data — including revenue and profit/loss — for business units like such as digital media, cloud computing, food delivery and more for the first time in response to recent FCC investigation of its accounting of affiliates like logistics firm Cainao, and Youku, Tudou.

Highlights of Alibaba Q2 results

The company’s China marketplaces pulled in total sales of $3.5 billion (RMB 23.4 billion), 49% higher than the same time last year.

75% of revenue came from mobile devices — $2.6 billion (RMB 17.5 billion) — up 119% year-over-year.

Alibaba-financial-summary-results-2016
From the official press release,

China retail marketplaces had 434 million annual active buyers in the 12 months ended June 30, 2016, compared to 423 million in the 12 months ended March 31, 2016.

Alibaba’s affiliates are burning cash — per the chart below — but Alibaba is betting that they will supplement its core business in the future.

alibaba revenue q2 2016

“We’re starting to serve local consumers in Southeast Asia, a market with over 500 million potential consumers,”Alibaba Vice President Joe Tsai said. “That’s going to be a very important potential market for us.”


A version of this appeared in TechCrunch on Aug 11. Read the full article here or the full press release here.

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Alibaba Group Predicts 48% Rise for 2017 in Annual Sales Forecast

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Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group is predicting a 48% rise in fiscal year 2017 in its first annual sales forecast, boosted by recent acquisitions and plans for expansion, reports USA Today.

The expected growth comes after major acquisitions of the video streaming service Youku Tudou and private ecommerce company Lazada Group, based in Singapore, within the past year.

Excluding the consolidated revenues from Youku and Lazada, the growth would be over 36%.

A bumpy year so far

After holding the biggest initial public offering in 2014, Alibaba faced a series of challenges last year – including lawsuits involving the sale of counterfeit goods –  sending its stock into a spiral. Shares fell as low as $57.20, undercutting its IPO price of $68, after the Chinese stock market crashed in August.

Alibaba founder and Executive Chairman, Jack Ma, said the key to the company’s long term growth will be expanding into international markets and investing in big data according to Alibaba’s website.

Ma aims to serve 2 billion people, create 100 million jobs around the world and have a valuation equivalent to the GDP of the fifth-richest country in four years.

“We have the world’s largest retailer, but we are not a retail business, we are a data business,” Ma said.

Possible risks to future growth include difficulty entering international markets, concentrated voting ownership and Chinese geopolitical concerns according to Stifel. China has criticized Alibaba for illegally allowing the sale of fake and forbidden goods.

Shares rose 3% Tuesday to $77.77 and continued to gain early Wednesday.

A version of this appeared in USA Today. Find the full article here.

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