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Alibaba posts first operating loss as public company following antitrust fine

May 13, 2021 11:46 pm

Alibaba on Thursday posted its first quarterly operating loss since going public in 2014 due to a record anti-monopoly fine by the country's market regulator.

Details: In the quarter ended March 31, 2021, revenue was RMB 187,395 million ($28,602 million), an increase of 64% year-over-year. In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, revenue was RMB 717.289 billion ($109.48 billion), an increase of 41% year-on-year.

The e-commerce giant said its loss from operations was RMB 7.66 billion ($1.19 billion)as a result of the fine. It is the first time Alibaba has reported an operating loss as a public company, CEO Daniel Zhang said Thursday.

The GMV for the 2021 fiscal year was RMB 8.119 trillion ($1.239 trillion), which mainly includes RMB 7.494 trillion ($1.144 trillion) from China and the international market.

In the 2021 fiscal year, cloud computing revenue increased by 50% year-on-year to RMB 60.12 billion ($9.176 billion). In the March quarter of 2021, cloud computing revenue increased 37% year-on-year to 16.761 RMB billion ($2.558 billion). Alibaba Group ranks third globally and first in the Asia Pacific region in the global Infrastructure-as-a-Service market, according to Gartner’s April 2021 report. 

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.

The revenue of Alibaba's logistics subsidiary Cainiao Network grew steadily by 68% year-on-year, reaching RMB 37.258 billion ($5.687 billion), accounting for 5% of the company's total revenue.

Alibaba forecast annual revenue of 930 billion yuan ($144.12 billion) for the year ending March 2022, above expectation of 928.25 billion yuan.

Context: China is speeding up the supervision of Internet giants' monopoly after years of laissez-faire approach. The top market regulator slapped a record 18,228 billion ($2,782 billion) fine on Alibaba on April 12, after an anti-monopoly probe found the e-commerce giant had abused its dominant market position for several years.