China’s Alibaba said overseas e-commerce will be its main focus, as the company sees growth and a difficult year at home.
Earlier this month, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd restructured its e-commerce business into separate China and international divisions, with the latter led by the head of Taobao and Tmall, Jiang Fan.
Alibaba Deputy CFO Toby Xu, making his first major public statement since being appointed this month as CFO, said international e-commerce “will be one of the main growth drivers”. It added that 57 percent of revenue for Cainiao, Alibaba’s logistics unit, came from overseas.
Earlier at a two-day investor event, Alibaba said it had set a target of $100 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) for Lazada, an e-commerce service for Southeast Asia.
Lazada generated 21 billion US dollars in GMV from September 2020 to the same month in 2021.
CFO Maggie Wu said that Alibaba would include international trade under Alibaba’s larger “Core Trading” financial segment in revenue, in addition to trade from its domestic market.
Local consumer services, which include shipping and mapping services, and Cainiao also fall into this category.
Last year, Beijing intervened at the last minute to cancel Ant’s planned $37 billion listing. Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma later slipped from the limelight and Chinese authorities initiated a year-long regulatory crackdown.
In November, Alibaba cut its annual revenue forecast for the current fiscal year, from an initial 29.5 percent growth target to between 20 percent and 23 percent.
The company has faced stiff competition from rivals including Pinduoduo Inc, which has won over consumers in rural China, and ByteDance’s Douyin, which has grown up in China’s skyrocketing live-streaming e-commerce sector.
