Alibaba grows revenue by 5% in Q3 2024, adds $25b to share buyback program

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Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group increased its revenue by 5% year on year in the third quarter of FY 2024 to US$36.67 billion, slightly lower than what analysts estimated.

The company, whose financial year ends March 31, also generated US$7.4 billion in adjusted EBITDA – a 2% jump compared to the same period in 2023. However, income from operations decreased 36% year on year to US$3.17 billion.

Alibaba attributed the decline to noncash items, namely impairment on retail arm Sun Art’s intangible assets and video platform Youku’s goodwill. Regardless, net cash provided by operating activities still fell by 26% year on year.

In a statement, group CEO Eddie Wu said the company’s top priority is to “reignite the growth of our core businesses, ecommerce and cloud computing.”

“We will step up investment to improve users’ core experiences to drive growth in Taobao and Tmall Group and strengthen market leadership in the coming year,” said Wu. “We will also focus our resources on developing public cloud products and sustaining the strong growth momentum in international commerce business.”

Taobao and Tmall Group continued to be Alibaba’s main revenue drivers, contributing US$18.2 billion. This was followed by its international digital commerce segment, which grew 44% year on year to US$4 billion in revenue.

“Solid growth” across all retail platforms, especially from AliExpress’ cross-border Choice business, fueled Alibaba’s strong international performance. The company added that Choice represented half of AliExpress’ total orders for January 2024, while the loss per order at Lazada, its Southeast Asian arm, continued to narrow.

Alibaba’s cloud unit posted US$3.9 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 3% uptick compared to the same year-ago period. Furthermore, revenue from the Digital Media and Entertainment Group rose 18% year over year to US$710 million, driven by robust growth in Alibaba Pictures’ offline entertainment sector.

Throughout the 2023 calendar year, Alibaba Group had repurchased US$9.5 billions’ worth of ordinary shares. On that note, the company’s board of directors has approved a US$25 billion increase in its share repurchase program through the end of March 2027.

Toby Xu, the group’s CFO, said the move demonstrated Alibaba’s “confidence in the outlook of [its] business and cash flow.”

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