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Alibaba ( BABA ) says it’s on a path to realizing its vision of achieving $1 trillion in gross merchandise volume in about four years, as it also pursues a goal of reaching 2 billion consumers on its e-commerce platforms. During the company’s conference call after posting its fiscal-fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, company CEO Daniel Zhang cited reasons he’s optimistic of hitting the $1 trillion GMV goal. One big reason, he noted, is Alibaba’s successful transition from PCs to mobile devices. By comparison, e-commerce software firm ChannelAdvisor ( ECOM ) estimates Amazon.com ‘s ( AMZN ) GMV in 2015 at $225.6 billion, with 310 million users. At the time of Alibaba’s initial public offering in September 2014, mobile contributed less than 40% of GMV. Today, it’s 73%. Success also depends on international expansion and in continuing to transform its e-commerce business, along with continued investments and growth in its media and digital entertainment platforms, as well as its cloud computing business. Alibaba is one of the four largest Internet companies in China. The others are JD.com ( JD ), which runs a direct-to-consumer e-commerce site similar to Amazon ( AMZN ); China search-engine leader Baidu ( BIDU ); and Tencent Holdings ( TCEHY ), which dominates in gaming and mobile messaging. For all Zhang’s bravado, Alibaba is less than halfway toward its goal: For its fiscal year ended March 31, Alibaba had GMV of $485 billion, up 27%. And it said it had 423 million active buyers, up 21%. GMV is the total value of goods sold across Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms. Alibaba does not take part in direct sales, hold inventory or compete directly with its merchant base. Businesses and consumers use Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, and Alibaba takes about a 2.5% cut of GMV sales. It also makes money from advertising. Alibaba Counts On Growth For Tmall, Taobao Alibaba’s core e-commerce retail platforms are Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan. Together, they have 367 million active buyers, with about 90% of Alibaba’s revenue generated in China. Getting to $1 trillion will depend on the growth and expansion mainly of Tmall and Taobao. Tmall is China’s largest business-to-consumer website. Taobao is a consumer-to-consumer e-commerce website similar to eBay ( EBAY ). Taobao is the larger of the two. In fiscal 2016, it hit GMV of $295 billion, up 18%. Tmall reached $190 billion, up 43%. Part of Alibaba’s GMV growth is pegged to global expansion. Alibaba last month announced it acquired a controlling stake in Singapore-based Lazada, a leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, for $1 billion. Lazada operates online retail platforms across Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore, with GMV of $1 billion in 2015. “Our acquisition of a controlling stake in Lazada will allow access to 560 million consumers in one of the most promising markets for e-commerce,” said Chung Tsai, Alibaba executive vice chairman, in the earnings conference call. Alibaba in the March quarter showed its highest growth rate in a year, despite an economic slowdown in China. “In these challenging times for the global economy, Alibaba is bucking the trend,” said Tsai. He said Chinese households today have aggregate net cash reserves of more than $4.6 trillion. “This accumulated wealth and liquidity is the result of real double-digit wage growth over the past decade,” he said. Kerry Rice, an analyst at Needham, says Alibaba has a lot of room for growth ahead. “We expect the company’s core business to continue to be the engine of growth, and despite its scale and dominant market share, we believe it still has significant room for growth,” Rice wrote in a research report. Rice rates Alibaba stock a buy, with a price target of 95. Alibaba stock was up a fraction in afternoon trading in the stock market today , near 79.50. Alibaba stock is up nearly 30% since touching a seven-month low in early February. Alibaba’s stock has had a rocky trip since its blockbuster IPO raised $24 billion, the most ever. Shares priced at 68 and hit a peak of 120 in November 2014. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney has an outperform rating and price target of 105 on Alibaba stock, up from a previous target of 89. Based on its strength in mobile, “we believe this means Alibaba can sustain premium growth rates in its key retail segment for the foreseeable future,” Mahaney wrote in a research note. Scalper1 News
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