China’s biggest online retail platform Alibaba closed lower in Hong Kong trading on Friday as investors mulled its Singles’ Day performance.
Alibaba said overnight that it closed its 13th annual 11.11 shopping festival with a record-breaking RMB540.3 billion (Chinese renminbi) in gross merchandise volume, or about £64 billion.
That implies volume growth of just 8.5%, the first time in history that growth has slowed below 10%. Hong Kong-listed Alibaba shares fell 0.5% to HK$162.40. The New York-listed stock is indicated to decline 0.35% to $167.26 when trading begins on Wall Street later today.
Singles’ Day was launched by Alibaba in 2009 and is China’s largest online discount shopping festival, attracting millions of Chinese consumers and dwarfing the equivalent Black Friday and Cyber Monday online shopping events.
LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
‘We delivered steady and quality growth that is a reflection of the dynamic Chinese consumption economy,’ said the Chinese tech company’s vice president, Yang Guang.
Earlier in the day, the company said on its live blog that around two-thirds of the 290,000 merchants participating in the festival were small and medium-sized businesses, the highest proportion ever.
ONLINE COMMERCE BELLWETHER
Analysts have long relied on the sales figure to gauge the health of China’s economy as well as Alibaba itself. In recent years, Alibaba has confronted fierce competition from rivals, such as JD.com and Pinduoduo, as well as live-streaming platforms run by the likes of TikTok-owner ByteDance after they also rolled out Singles’ Day promotions.
Alibaba’s revenue lagged consensus expectations during the June quarter, its first miss since 2019. The company will release its September quarter results on 18 November, with analysts on average forecasting a 33% increase in sales.
Alibaba also hopes to take Singles’ Day global, in a move that would challenge Amazon.
