Q4 Alibaba's digital entertainment business revenue increased by 273% year-on-year to 4.063 billion yuan

Due to the integration of Youku Tudou's business and the increase in revenue from mobile value-added services such as mobile search, news push and game publishing provided by UCWeb, revenue in the digital media and entertainment business reached 4.063 billion yuan this quarter, a year-on-year increase of 273%.

Original title: Alibaba Q3 revenue rose 54% for the full fiscal year revenue growth forecast is raised.

Beijing time On the evening of January 24, 2017, Alibaba Group announced its third quarter financial report for the fiscal year 2017: the group's revenue for the quarter increased by 54% year-on-year to 53.248 billion yuan; revenue from core e-commerce business increased by 45% year-on-year to 46.576 billion yuan. After three fiscal quarters that performed better than expected, Alibaba raised its full-year revenue growth forecast by 5 percentage points to 53%.

Alibaba Group's adjusted EBITA (earnings before interest, tax and amortisation) for the quarter (October 1 to December 31, 2016) increased by 42% year-on-year to RMB 25.669 billion, with an adjusted profit margin of 48%. Among them, the adjusted EBITA profit margin of the core e-commerce business was 64%. Excluding non-cash revaluation gains, equity awards and individual other items, quarterly adjusted earnings increased 36% year-on-year to 22.491 billion yuan, and diluted earnings per share were 9.02 yuan.

Since April 2016, Alibaba Group's revenue has achieved strong growth of 59% and 55% respectively in the first and second quarters of this fiscal year. This quarter was a year-on-year increase of 54%. Earlier, at the Investor Day held at Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou in June 2016, Alibaba gave a year-on-year revenue growth guideline of 48% for the full year of fiscal year 2017, which exceeded the market expectation of 42% at the time.

Based on the strong growth, Wu Wei, chief financial officer of Alibaba Group, said: "After three quarters that all beat expectations, we have revised our revenue guidance for fiscal 2017 from an annualized growth of 48% to a growth of 53%. According to non-GAAP, the group recorded free cash flow of US$4.9 billion this quarter. Alibaba will continue to use its strong cash flow to invest in growth areas globally: cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, and innovative projects, as well as core e-commerce business."

Specific to Alibaba's business segment, retail platform, Alibaba Cloud and M & A business grew strongly this quarter. The quarterly revenue of China's retail platforms was 40.802 billion yuan, an increase of 42% compared with the same period in 2015; the number of cloud computing paying customers increased by approximately 114,000 in the quarter, reaching a total of 765,000. Revenue in the quarter reached 1.764 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 115. Data centers have been opened in Japan, Germany, the Middle East and Australia.

Due to the integration of Youku Tudou's business and the increase in revenue from mobile value-added services such as mobile search, news push and game publishing provided by UCWeb, revenue in the digital media and entertainment business reached 4.063 billion yuan this quarter, a year-on-year increase of 273%. In addition, revenue from innovative projects and other businesses was 845 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 61%, exceeding market expectations.

In 2016, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China was 3.32316 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.4%; the national online retail sales were 5.1556 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.2%. Among them, user activity on Alibaba Mobile has further increased. As of December 31, 2016, the number of mobile monthly active users on China's retail platforms increased to 493 million, a net increase of 43 million from 450 million in the previous quarter. During the quarter, mobile revenue from China's retail platforms was RMB 32.451 billion, an increase of 73% compared with the same period in 2015; mobile accounted for 80% of the overall revenue of China's retail platforms, compared with only 65% in the same period in 2015.

HSBC analyzed that Alibaba is one of the top ten stocks in Asia driven by positive factors such as the increase in user monetization rates, the strong growth of Alibaba Cloud's business, and the good development trends of digital media such as Youku.

Editor: Nancy