To The Moon

(May 13) Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988, “Alibaba” or “Alibaba Group”) today announced its financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2021.

• Alibaba Q4 Non-GAAP EPS of RMB10.32 misses by RMB2.96; GAAP EPS of -RMB1.99.
• Revenue of RMB187.4B (+63.9% Y/Y)beats by RMB6.73B.
• Annual active consumers on our China retail marketplaces was 811 million for the twelve months ended March 31, 2021, an increase of 32 million from the twelve months ended December 31, 2020.
• Mobile MAUs on our China retail marketplaces reached 925 million in March 2021, an increase of 23 million over December 2020.
• “We expect to generate over RMB930 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2022. Given the market potential and our proven profit and cash flow generation capabilities, we plan to use all of our incremental profits and additional capital in fiscal year 2022 to support our merchants and invest into new businesses and key strategic areas that will help us increase consumer wallet share and penetrate into new addressable markets,” said Maggie Wu, Chief Financial Officer of Alibaba Group.

Alibaba rose 0.05% in premarket trading.

“Alibaba achieved a historic milestone of one billion annual active consumers globally in the fiscal year ended March 2021,” said Daniel Zhang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group. “Our overall business delivered strong growth on a healthy foundation, with the Alibaba Ecosystem generating a record US$1.2 trillion in GMV during this fiscal year. Such achievements were built on top of clear value propositions that we offer to consumers and merchants. We remain very excited about the growth of China’s consumption economy, which is benefiting from the acceleration of digitalization in all aspects of life and work. We will continue to focus on customer experience and value creation through innovation, as we pursue our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere in the digital era.”

“We surpassed our annual revenue guidance in fiscal year 2021 by achieving strong organic revenue growth of 32% excluding the consolidation of the newly-acquired Sun Art. This was driven by robust performance of our core commerce businesses as well as continued growth of Alibaba Cloud. Our adjusted EBITDA grew 25% year-over-year while we increased investments in new businesses and key strategic growth areas,” said Maggie Wu, Chief Financial Officer of Alibaba Group. “We expect to generate over RMB930 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2022. Given the market potential and our proven profit and cash flow generation capabilities, we plan to use all of our incremental profits and additional capital in fiscal year 2022 to support our merchants and invest into new businesses and key strategic areas that will help us increase consumer wallet share and penetrate into new addressable markets.”

BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS

In the quarter ended March 31, 2021:

• Revenuewas RMB187,395 million (US$28,602 million), an increase of 64% year-over-year. Excluding the consolidation of Sun Art, our revenue would have grown 40% year-over-year to RMB159,952 million (US$24,413 million).
• Annual active consumerson our China retail marketplaces was 811 million for the twelve months ended March 31, 2021, an increase of 32 million from the twelve months ended December 31, 2020.
• Mobile MAUson our China retail marketplaces reached 925 million in March 2021, an increase of 23 million over December 2020.
• Loss from operationswas RMB7,663 million (US$1,170 million) due to a RMB18,228 million (US$2,782 million) fine levied by China’s State Administration for Market Regulation pursuant to China’s Anti-monopoly Law (the “Anti-monopoly Fine”). Excluding this one-time impact, our income from operations would have been RMB10,565 million (US$1,612 million), an increase of 48% year-over-year.Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measurement, increased 18% year-over-year to RMB29,898 million (US$4,563 million).Adjusted EBITA, a non-GAAP measurement, increased 14% year-over-year to RMB22,612 million (US$3,451 million).
• Net loss attributable to ordinary shareholderswas RMB5,479 million (US$836 million),andnet losswas RMB7,654 million (US$1,168 million), primarily due to the above-mentioned Anti-monopoly Fine. Excluding this impact and certain other items,non-GAAP net incomewas RMB26,216 million (US$4,001 million), an increase of 18% year-over-year.
• Diluted loss per ADSwas RMB1.99 (US$0.30) anddiluted loss per sharewas RMB0.25 (US$0.04 or HK$0.30), primarily due to the above-mentioned Anti-monopoly Fine. Excluding this impact and certain other items,non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADSwas RMB10.32 (US$1.58), an increase of 12% year-over-year andnon-GAAP diluted earnings per sharewas RMB1.29 (US$0.20 or HK$1.53), an increase of 12% year-over-year.
• Net cash provided by operating activitieswas RMB24,183 million (US$3,691 million).Non-GAAP free cash flowwas an outflow of RMB658 million (US$100 million), compared to an outflow of RMB4,214 million in the same quarter of 2020.

In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021:

• Revenuewas RMB717,289 million (US$109,480 million), an increase of 41% year-over-year. Excluding the consolidation of Sun Art starting in October 2020, our revenue would have grown 32% year-over-year to RMB674,420 million (US$102,937 million).
• Annual active consumersfor the Alibaba Ecosystem reached a milestone of over 1 billion, including 891 million consumers across our China retail marketplace, Local Consumer Services and digital media and entertainment platforms, and approximately 240 million consumers outside China. Annual active consumers on our China retail marketplaces was 811 million, an increase of 85 million from the twelve months ended March 31, 2020.
• Mobile MAUson our China retail marketplaces reached 925 million in March 2021, an increase of 79 million over March 2020.
• GMVtransacted in the Alibaba Ecosystem was RMB8,119 billion (US$1,239 billion) for fiscal year 2021, which mainly included China retail marketplaces GMV of RMB7,494 billion (US$1,144 billion), as well as international retail marketplaces and Local Consumer Services GMV.
• Income from operationswas RMB89,678 million (US$13,688 million), a decrease of 2% year-over-year, primarily due to the above-mentioned Anti-monopoly Fine as well as a RMB16,054 million increase in share-based compensation expense related to Ant Group share-based awards granted to our employees.Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measurement, increased 25% year-over-year to RMB196,842 million (US$30,044 million).Adjusted EBITA, a non-GAAP measurement, increased 24% year-over-year to RMB170,453 million (US$26,016 million).
• Adjusted EBITA for core commercewas RMB194,512 million (US$29,688 million), an increase of 17% year-over-year. Ourmarketplace-based core commerce adjusted EBITA, a non-GAAP measurement, increased 17% year-over-year to RMB229,134 million (US$34,973 million). Starting this quarter, for purposes of presenting our marketplace-based core commerce adjusted EBITA, we expanded the list of new initiative businesses that we break out in order to present the progress of our strategic investments as well as the profitability of our marketplace-based core commerce businesses on a like-for-like basis. The new initiative businesses, which now include our New Retail businesses (primarily Freshippo, Tmall Supermarket, Community Marketplaces and Taoxianda), Local Consumer Services, Lazada, Taobao Deals, Cainiao Network, and others, represent strategic areas where we are executing to capture incremental opportunities. Comparative figures are presented in the same manner accordingly.
• Net income attributable to ordinary shareholderswas RMB150,308 million (US$22,941 million),andnet incomewas RMB143,284 million (US$21,869 million), which reflected the above-mentioned Anti-monopoly Fine and the increase in share-based compensation expense described in “Income from operations” above.Excluding these impacts and certain other items,non-GAAP net incomewas RMB171,985 million (US$26,250 million), an increase of 30% year-over-year.
• Diluted earnings per ADSwas RMB54.70 (US$8.35) anddiluted earnings per sharewas RMB6.84 (US$1.04 or HK$8.09), which reflected the above-mentioned Anti-monopoly Fine and the increase in share-based compensation expense described in “Income from operations” above.Excluding these impacts and certain other items,non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADSwas RMB65.15 (US$9.94), an increase of 23% year-over-year andnon-GAAP diluted earnings per sharewas RMB8.14 (US$1.24 or HK$9.63), an increase of 23% year-over-year.
• Net cash provided by operating activitieswas RMB231,786 million (US$35,378 million) andnon-GAAP free cash flowwas RMB172,662 million (US$26,353 million), an increase of 32% year-over-year.

Reconciliations of GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures presented above are included at the end of this results announcement.

BUSINESS AND STRATEGIC UPDATES

Alibaba Ecosystem

Our China consumer-facing businesses include China retail marketplaces, Local Consumer Services and digital media and entertainment platforms, serving the Chinese consumer sector, which is a RMB41.9 trillion (US$6.4 trillion) market for the twelve months ended March 31, 2021, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Our China consumer-facing businesses served 891 million annual active consumers during the twelve months ended March 31, 2021. Our international retail marketplaces, which include mainly the AliExpress cross-border retail platform and Lazada in Southeast Asia, served approximately 240 million annual active consumers during the same period. Our China and international consumer segments combined to serve over one billion annual active consumers and generated RMB8,119 billion (US$1,239 billion) in GMV.

Our digital infrastructure, such as smart logistics and cloud computing, which enables and underpins across our platforms to serve our major commerce, local services and entertainment businesses, gives us unique technology-driven capabilities to meet changing consumer demand and help our enterprise customers and partners achieve digital transformation.

Core Commerce

China Retail Marketplaces – comprehensive product supply and engaging user experience drive consumer growth and high consumer retention rate

Consumers

In March 2021, our China retail marketplaces had 925 million mobile MAUs, representing annual and quarterly net increases of 79 million and 23 million, respectively. There were 811 million annual active consumers on our China retail marketplaces for the twelve months ended March 31, 2021, representing annual and quarterly net increases of 85 million and 32 million, respectively. In fiscal year 2021, approximately 70% of new annual active consumers were from less developed areas.

In fiscal year 2021, the strong GMV and user growth on our China retail marketplaces reflected our strategic focus on less developed cities and towns and broadening offerings of products and services to meet diverse consumption demand. Overall online physical goods GMV, excluding unpaid orders, grew 21% year-over-year in fiscal year 2021, driven primarily by the fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG) and home furnishing categories, and 33% year-over-year in the March quarter, driven primarily by the apparel and home furnishing categories. For the March quarter, Tmall online physical goods GMV, excluding unpaid orders, grew 26% year-over-year and Taobao online physical goods GMV, excluding unpaid orders, grew even faster as SME merchants recovered from the pandemic.

Our app platforms appeal to a growing and increasingly diverse consumer base at various income levels as well as present different purchase use cases for the same consumer. Taobao Deals (特价版) offers value-for-money products for the price-conscious consumer and achieved rapid growth in fiscal year 2021. Annual active consumers of Taobao Deals reached over 150 million for the twelve months ended March 31, 2021. Taobao Deals continues to be an offering that attracts incremental users especially in less developed areas, and we have seen robust retention rate given its clear value-for-money proposition and its expanding product selections in different categories.

We also saw increasing engagement of the existing consumer base on our China retail app platforms. The longer a consumer has shopped on our platforms, the more they spend through more orders across more product categories. In fiscal year 2021, average annual spending per consumer on our China retail marketplaces reached over RMB9,200 (US$1,404). Consumers on our China retail marketplaces exhibit high retention across all spending levels.

Product Supply

A key to the success of our business is broadening product supply, including increasing the range of branded and imported products, going upstream to directly source agricultural products and expanding the breadth of selection of value-for-money and long-tail products. Consumption upgrading also helped to drive our business, as more consumers are purchasing from flagship stores of high-end brands and international retailers on our platforms. More than 200 luxury brands and retailers, such as Cartier, Farfetch, Gucci, IWC and Van Cleef & Arpels, operated their flagship stores on our China retail marketplaces, as of March 31, 2021.

Engagement

The Taobao app is the largest social commerce platform in China, offering rich, highly relevant and curated content and features that enable merchants to engage with consumers through live-streaming, short-form videos, interactive games and microblogs. Among these interactive features, livestreaming is one of the fastest growing with significant scale. Taobao Live GMV reached over RMB500 billion (US$76.3 billion) in fiscal year 2021.

New Retail – multi-format New Retail businesses built on an expanding digital supply chain and increasingly diversified fulfilment services

Our New Retail strategy is to develop a digital commerce infrastructure that offers an upgraded consumer experience by seamlessly integrating online and offline. Over the years, we have helped many retailers digitally transform their businesses and created multiple retail formats that have enabled new consumption experiences by leveraging our consumer insights and technology. These New Retail businesses are supported and strengthened by our ecosystem with an expanding supply chain and increasingly diversified fulfilment services.

Our New Retail commerce infrastructure now offers a full range of high-frequency fulfilment services that include on-demand delivery, same-or-next day delivery and next day pick-up services for a full range of consumable and physical products. We will continue to expand all of these fulfilment services across China to reach and serve even more consumers in both large cities and less developed areas as well as drive higher purchase frequency through more effective cross-selling on our China retail marketplaces.

Community Marketplaces– As part of our latest exploration in New Retail, we started the Community Marketplaces business in select regions in China. Our Community Marketplaces business is supported by our next-day pickup fulfilment services and the supply capabilities of Freshippo, Sun Art and other partners. Given the initial success and long-term growth potential, we established a new business group in early 2021 to consolidate the resources and capabilities of the Alibaba Ecosystem in order to accelerate the growth of our Community Marketplaces business. Our Community Marketplaces are rapidly expanding their logistics and fulfilment infrastructure and aim to achieve broad coverage across mainland China within the next twelve months.

Freshippo– Our self-operated retail chain Freshippo (known as “Hema” in Chinese) continued to execute a multi-format and multi-banner expansion strategy. In fiscal year 2021, Freshippo achieved healthy same-store sales growth, enriched and optimized its product selection and introduced new initiatives to improve customer experience. As of March 31, 2021, we had 257 self-operated Freshippo stores (compared to 202 stores as of March 31, 2020), primarily located in tier-one and tier-two cities throughout China.

Taoxianda– Taoxianda, our online-offline retail integration service solution for FMCG brands and third-party grocery retail partners, puts us at the forefront of transforming the retail industry by digitalizing all aspects of store-based operations. Taoxianda drove Sun Art’s digitalization of its hypermarkets and, along with our other businesses, facilitated the growth of Sun Art’s online revenue. For the twelve months ended March 31, 2021, online revenue represented 24% of Sun Art’s sales of goods, increasing from 17% for the twelve months ended March 31, 2020. As of March 31, 2021, in addition to Sun Art, Taoxianda helped 42 retail chains to open online stores with services available across 145 cities in China and enabled over 168 retail chains, supermarkets and marketplaces to digitalize their marketing program.

Local Consumer Services – Investing for new user acquisition and enhanced consumer experience

In fiscal year 2021, Ele.me continued to improve its merchant supply and operating efficiency, as reflected in the increasing number of merchants, higher portion of GMV from national and regional chains and improved unit economics year-over-year. Building on this progress, starting from the March quarter 2021, Ele.me stepped up its investment in user acquisition as well as user experience enhancement. For example, during the Chinese New Year period Ele.me increased its rider subsidy to address the usual shortage of riders. As a result, Ele.me’s average daily number of paying members continued to grow strongly at approximately 40% year-over-year during the March quarter.

Cainiao Network – improving efficiency across the Alibaba Ecosystem and the logistics industry in China and internationally

Cainiao Network continues to expand both its domestic services and global smart logistics infrastructure by deepening integration with logistics partners as well as offering more products and services. In fiscal year 2021, after elimination of inter-company transactions, Cainiao Network achieved solid revenue growth of 68% year-over-year, to RMB37,258 million (US$5,687 million), representing 5% of our total revenue. Cainiao Network also reached an important milestone of generating positive operating cash flow during fiscal year 2021.

A key driver of Cainiao Network’s strong financial performance is its global smart logistics infrastructure, which took years of investment to build. This global logistics infrastructure now enjoys increasing adoption of “Fulfilled by Cainiao” services by merchants from our fast growing cross-border businesses, including AliExpress and Tmall Global. Daily package volume on Cainiao Network’s global parcel network for the month ended March 31, 2021 exceeded 5 million.

In China, Cainiao Network expanded the coverage of Cainiao Post (neighborhood and campus stations and residential self-pick up stations), as well as improved the customer experience of Cainiao Guoguo (crowdsourced parcel pick-up and delivery service). In March 2021, Cainiao Post’s average daily package volume nearly tripled year-over-year.

International – consistent strong growth of Lazada and AliExpress

Our international commerce retail business, mainly including Lazada and AliExpress, grew rapidly to achieve approximately 240 million annual active consumers in the twelve months ended March 31, 2021.

Lazada– Lazada recorded triple-digit year-over-year order growth during the fiscal year and quarter ended March 31, 2021. Lazada continued to focus on investing in technology and logistics to enable merchants to better service consumers. We have seen strong adoption of store operation and business analytics tools by merchants on the Lazada platform, enabling them to achieve scale and GMV growth.

AliExpress– AliExpress is a marketplace for consumers from around the world to buy directly from manufacturers and distributors, mainly from China but also increasingly in consumers’ local markets. AliExpress continued to improve its localization initiatives in the areas of differentiated product offerings and improved local delivery experience, which resulted in robust user and GMV growth in fiscal year 2021.

Cloud Computing

In 2020, Alibaba Group was ranked third globally and first in the Asia Pacific region in the global Infrastructure-as-a-Service market, according to Gartner’s April 2021 report. Alibaba Cloud’s unique advantages are its proprietary technology and Alibaba Group’s continued commitment to invest in research and development in new product offerings and industry-specific solutions for our customers and partners. Highlights of our proprietary technologies in fiscal year 2021 include:

• Elastic Computing- In February 2021, Alibaba Cloud launched the 7th generation ECS public cloud server that increases overall computing power by 40%. Built on top of our proprietary X-Dragon architecture, this new generation server offers mission critical security enhancements, which is especially important for customers in the Internet and finance industries that require fail-safe continuous operations and highly secure cloud infrastructure.
• Database- Our proprietary technologies have consistently won recognition from leading research and advisory organizations. For example, in December 2020, PolarDB, one of our key database products, won the first prize of the Science and Technology Progress Award of the Chinese Institute of Electronics.
• Serverless- In the first quarter of 2021, Forrester recognized Alibaba Function Compute, our suite of serverless products, as a leader in the Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) market given our technological advancements and comprehensive product offerings. Alibaba Cloud is the only cloud vendor in China to be recognized as a FaaS leader.

In fiscal year 2021, our cloud computing revenue grew 50% year-over-year, to RMB60,120 million (US$9,176 million), primarily driven by growth in revenue from customers in the Internet, public sector and finance industries. In the March 2021 quarter, cloud computing revenue grew 37% year-over-year to RMB16,761 million (US$2,558 million). The slower revenue growth during the quarter was primarily due to revenue decline from a top cloud customer in the Internet industry. This customer, which has a sizeable presence outside of China that used our overseas cloud services in the past, has decided to terminate the relationship with respect to their international business due to non-product related requirements. Excluding this customer, Alibaba Cloud’s top ten non-affiliated customers together accounted for no more than eight percent of Alibaba Cloud’s total revenue in fiscal year 2021. Going forward, we believe that our cloud computing revenue will be further diversified across customers and industries.

Digital Media and Entertainment

During fiscal year 2021, Youku continued to focus on delivering a superior user experience and increasing paying subscribers. Youku’s average daily subscriber base continued to grow at a healthy rate, increasing 35% year-over-year during the fiscal year. The increase in paying subscribers was driven by our offerings of original and exclusive content, our effective targeting of new subscribers and a greater contribution from the 88VIP membership program on our China retail marketplaces. We invested in original and exclusive content while ensuring cost efficiencies and return on investment, which resulted in narrowing annual adjusted EBITA losses year-over-year in fiscal year 2021.

Despite the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic on cinemas and live performance industries, Alibaba Pictures significantly narrowed its losses in fiscal year 2021, given successful diversification of its revenue stream beyond film and ticketing business and enhanced operational efficiency of its online ticketing platform (Tao Piao Piao) with lowered sales and marketing expenses. Alibaba Pictures will continue to diversify its businesses to capture revenue opportunities in the entire entertainment value chain, including content development, production, promotion and distribution, as well as IP commercialization. We believe these initiatives will ensure Alibaba Pictures’ long-term growth potential with a diversified revenue stream.

Innovation Initiatives and Others

Amap–Amap is the largest provider of mobile digital map, navigation and real-time traffic information in China by monthly active users. It leverages big-data enabled digital mapping technology to power major mobile apps across different industries including local services, ride-hailing services and social networking. Amap reached an important milestone of over 100 million average DAUs in the month of April 2021.

Share Repurchases

Pursuant to our share repurchase authorization, for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021 and through the publication of this results announcement, we repurchased approximately 1.7 million of our ADSs (or approximately 13.6 million of our ordinary shares) for approximately US$371 million under the share repurchase program. As of March 31, 2021, we had approximately 21.7 billion ordinary shares issued and outstanding.

Cash Flow from Operating Activities and Free Cash Flow

In the fiscal year 2021, net cash provided by operating activities was RMB231,786 million (US$35,378 million), an increase of 28% compared to RMB180,607 million in the fiscal year 2020. Free cash flow, a non-GAAP measurement of liquidity, increased by 32% in fiscal year 2021 to RMB172,662 million (US$26,353 million), from RMB130,914 million in fiscal year 2020, mainly due to our profit growth.

In the quarter ended March 31, 2021, net cash provided by operating activities was RMB24,183 million (US$3,691 million), which includes a net cash inflow of RMB18,796 million (US$2,869 million) in connection with the consumer protection fund deposits received primarily from Tmall merchants, as well as our increased spending for strategic initiatives. Free cash flow, which excluded these deposits and certain other items, was an outflow of RMB658 million (US$100 million) in the quarter ended March 31, 2021, compared to an outflow of RMB4,214 million in the same quarter of 2020. A reconciliation of net cash provided by operating activities to free cash flow is included at the end of this results announcement.

Guidance

The guidance below is a forward-looking statement that reflects assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of the date of this announcement and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, many of which we are not able to predict or control. Based on our current view of Chinese and global consumption, enterprise digitalization and the competitive landscape, and subject to the uncertainties highlighted under the section entitled “Safe Harbor Statements” below, we expect to generate over RMB930 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2022.