Alibaba Group Active Consumers up 62M in Q3

On the heels of an estimated $139 billion in Singles Day sales for Alibaba and JD.com, Alibaba Group Holding Limited’s active consumers hit 1.24 billion, spurred by a quarterly increase of about 62 million.

“This quarter, Alibaba continued to firmly invest into our three strategic pillars of domestic consumption, globalization and cloud computing to establish solid foundations for our long-term goal of sustainable growth in the future,” Alibaba Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang said in the company’s quarterly earnings report Thursday (Nov. 18).

Alibaba recorded revenue growth of 29% year-over-year to $31.1 billion, thanks to the performance of its diversified businesses, Alibaba Group Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu said in the quarterly update.

“During this quarter, our continued investments in key strategic areas have resulted in robust growth for these young businesses,” she said.

Revenue from Alibaba’s international commerce retail and international commerce wholesale was $2.342 billion, up 34% year over year, while its cloud computing revenue was $3.105 billion, an increase of 33% year over year.

Alibaba has 953 million consumers in China and 285 million consumers overseas, a quarterly net increase of 41 million and 20 million, respectively.

The company has upped its fiscal 2022 revenue guidance to reflect 20% to 23% growth year-over-year.

Related: JD.com, Alibaba Sales Not Enough To Boost China’s Sluggish Singles Day

JD.com and Alibaba combined for record online sales during the annual Singles Day celebration, but that wasn’t enough to buoy the world’s biggest multi-day shopping extravaganza, which traditionally generates more sales than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

Singles Day was started by Alibaba in 2009 as a day to celebrate singlehood on Nov. 11 (11/11) and has since moved from a one-day event to 11 days. Overall growth for 2021 Singles Day merchants was in the single digits, down from the typical double-digit gains of the past decade.

China’s continuing crackdown on Big Tech and associated tightening of regulations, supply chain snags reducing inventory, and consumers’ concerns about economic instability are among the reasons for this year’s slowdown, although the event attracted a record 290,000 brands and 900 million consumers.