Alibaba: biggest tech IPO? – how story continues

I didn’t have time to write during #IPO of #Alibaba, but I had positive feelings about this one due to its dominant market position in China. First quarterly report seem to be quite impressive as expected. Although few questions remain open.

Especially growth in mobile revenue is highlighting the fact that Alibaba is moving with the trend wave and is able to capture the benefits from there.

Moving to new markets?

The ecosystems created by Alibaba into Chinese market place is also interesting. It will create difficult barrier of entry for other players interested in penetrating to the market. Alibaba is dominating its home market, but can it export same strengths into other markets? This has been tricky part of the strategy also for the peer group.

Keeping the focus?

Plenty of money has been burned into expansion towards new areas (ie. UCWeb, AutoNavi). There is interesting challenge how they will behave towards their new owners after IPO. Amazon is currently challenged about the balance of their spending: how much they show as result and how much is spent into new businesses (maybe not even in core of their strategy?)

All in all, I see positive situation what comes to future of Alibaba. Just need to follow up quarter by quarter how their strategy develops.

Alibaba quarterly earnings:

July-August 2014
US$ YoY % Change
Revenue 2,742 53.7%
Mobile Revenue 606 1,020.2%
Income from Operations 708 (17.2%)*
Non-GAAP EBITDA(5) 1,384 30.6%
Non-GAAP EBITDA Margin(5)
Net Income 494 (38.6%)*
Non-GAAP Net Income(5) 1,109 15.5%
Diluted Earnings per Share/ADS (EPS) 0.20 (41.8%)*
Non-GAAP Diluted EPS(5) 0.45 9.4%

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