Conference Call Participants
Ronald Keung - Goldman Sachs
Ronald Keung - 高盛公司
Alicia Yap - Citigroup
阿丽西亚叶 - 花旗集团
Jiong Shao - Barclays
炅绍 - 巴克莱
Kenneth Fong - UBS
Kenneth Fong - 瑞银证券
Alex Yao - JPMorgan
亚历克斯·姚 - 摩根大通
Gary Yu - Morgan Stanley
嘉瑞·余 - 摩根士丹利
Ellie Jiang - Macquarie
艾莉·江 - 麦观理
Jialong Shi - Nomura
赛加龙·诺世是
Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Alibaba Group's December Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After managements prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session.
女士们，先生们，大家好。感谢您的到来。欢迎参加阿里巴巴集团2023年12月季度业绩电话会议。此时所有参与者将处于听取模式。管理层做完准备好的发言后，将有问答环节。
I would now like to turn the call over to Rob Lin, Head of Investor Relations of Alibaba Group. Please go ahead.
我现在想把电话转给阿里巴巴集团的投资者关系部总监林先生。请讲。
Rob Lin
Rob Lin
Good day, everyone, and welcome to Alibaba Group's December quarter 2023 results conference call. With us are Joe Tsai, Chairman; Eddie Wu, Chief Executive Officer; Toby Xu, Chief Financial Officer. We have also invited Jiang Fan, CEO of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, AIDC, to join the call. This call is also being webcasted on the IR section of our corporate website. A replay of the call will be available on our website later today.
大家好，欢迎参加阿里巴巴集团2023年12月季度业绩电话会议。今天和我们一起的有蔡崇信主席、吴庆华首席执行官、徐波首席财务官。我们还邀请了阿里巴巴国际数码商务集团（AIDC）的首席执行官蒋凡加入本次电话会议。该电话会议也正在我们公司网站的IR部分进行网络直播，今天稍后我们网站上将提供电话会议的回放。
Now let me cover the safe harbor. Today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements including without limitation, statements about our new organization and government structure, strategies and business plans as well as our beliefs and expectations about our business prospects such as the future growth of our business, revenue and return on investment.
现在让我来谈谈避风港。今天的讨论可能包括前瞻性声明，包括但不限于关于我们新的组织和政府结构、战略和业务计划，以及我们对业务前景的信念和期望，例如我们业务的未来增长、收入和投资回报。
Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. For detailed discussions of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our latest annual report on Form 20-F and other documents filed with the U.S. SEC. or announced on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
前瞻性陈述涉及固有的风险和不确定性，可能导致实际结果与我们目前的预期有重大差异。有关这些风险和不确定性的详细讨论，请参阅我们最新的20-F表格年度报告以及在美国证券交易委员会（SEC）提交的其他文件，或在香港证券交易所网站上公告的文件。
Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we do not undertake any obligation to update these statements, except as required under applicable law. Please note that certain financial measures that we use on this call, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted EBITA, adjusted EBITA margin, non-GAAP net income, non-GAAP diluted earnings per share or ADS and free cash flow are expressed on a non-GAAP basis.
我们在此电话中所做的任何前瞻性声明均基于今天的假设，我们无需承担任何更新这些声明的义务，除非在适用法律下有要求。请注意，我们在此电话中使用的某些财务指标，如调整后的EBITDA、调整后的EBITDA利润率、调整后的EBITA、调整后的EBITA利润率、非GAAP净收入、非GAAP摊薄每股收益或ADS以及自由现金流量均是按非GAAP基础表达的。
Our GAAP results and reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measure can be found in earnings press release. Unless otherwise stated, growth rate of all stated metrics mentioned during this call refers to year-over-year growth versus the same quarter last year.
我们的GAAP结果和GAAP与非GAAP指标的调和可以在盈利新闻发布中找到。除非另有说明，通话中提到的所有指标的增长率均指与去年同季度相比的同比增长。
With that, I will now turn to Eddie.
关于这点，我现在会转到 Eddie。
Eddie Wu
Eddie Wu
Hello, everyone. Over this past quarter, we delivered steady growth while making organizational adjustments that align with our strategic focus. At the same time, we took a deep look at our core business operations and the competitive landscape. We concluded that to maintain our competitive edge, we increase our investment in core capabilities and adopt a more aggressive approach towards competition in order to win growth. Our top priority is to reignite the growth of our two core businesses, e-commerce and cloud computing.
大家好。在过去的季度里，我们实现了稳健增长，同时进行了组织调整，以配合我们的战略重点。与此同时，我们深入研究了我们的核心业务运营和竞争格局。我们得出的结论是，为了保持竞争优势，我们需要增加对核心能力的投资，并采取更积极的竞争方式，以赢得增长。我们的首要任务是重新激发我们的两个核心业务——电子商务和云计算的增长。
During the quarter, the execution of our user-first and competitive pricing strategies in Taobao and Tmall Group, TTG was effective resulting in healthy year-over-year GMV growth as the number of active buyers and order volume showed a robust increase. The number of merchants continue to grow at a double-digit rate, and I'll elaborate on the outlook and plans for 2024 in a moment. In Cloud Computing, we're committed to our strategy of prioritizing public cloud. We have proactively optimized our business structure, reduced revenue from project-based contracts and increased investment in public cloud products. These structural adjustments are showing results and Alibaba Cloud's overall profitability capability continues to improve.
在本季度中，我们在淘宝和天猫集团执行以用户为先和具有竞争力的定价策略非常有效，使得年度总交易额呈健康的同比增长，活跃买家数量和订单量也显著增加。商家数量继续以两位数增长，稍后我会详细说明2024年的展望和计划。在云计算方面，我们决心优先考虑公共云战略。我们积极优化了业务结构，减少了来自项目合同的收入，并增加了对公共云产品的投资。这些结构调整正在取得成效，阿里云整体盈利能力持续提高。
We've also upgraded Alibaba Cloud's sales operations establishing different sales and service systems to serve different types and sizes of customers by improving our customer coverage and service capabilities, we will enhance our growth rate. In the International Commerce business, we focused on expanding cross-border offerings and enhancing the shopping experience. This quarter, all of AIDC's retail platforms achieved growth resulting in international digital commerce overall revenues growing at a rapid rate of 44% year-over-year. Cainiao continued to develop its global smart logistics network with cross-border logistics fulfillment solutions contributing to 24% and year-over-year revenue growth as well as realizing strong synergies with the cross-border e-commerce business.
我们还升级了阿里云的销售运营，建立了不同的销售和服务系统来为不同类型和规模的客户提供服务，并通过改进我们的客户覆盖范围和服务能力，增强我们的增长速度。在国际商务业务方面，我们致力于扩大跨境业务，并增强购物体验。本季度，所有AIDC的零售平台都取得了增长，导致国际数字商务整体收入同比迅速增长了44%。菜鸟继续发展其全球智能物流网络，跨境物流履行解决方案贡献了24%的同比收入增长，并与跨境电商业务实现了强大的协同作用。
Next, I'd like to share the strategic priorities for TTG in investing and capturing growth opportunities. TTG operates in the world's most competitive e-commerce market, which is China. As we carefully evaluate TTG's competitive position within the China e-commerce market, we note that TTG continues to be number one in GMV share and is the leading platform for consumer shopping. Merchants operate on the platform as their primary place of e-commerce business, and TTG has the deepest and most comprehensive selection of products amongst its peers. However, we must still make targeted investments and improvements in price competitiveness, service and user experience.
接下来,我想分享TTG在投资和抓住增长机遇方面的战略优先事项。TTG在世界上最具竞争力的电子商务市场中国运营。在我们仔细评估TTG在中国电子商务市场的竞争地位时,我们注意到TTG在GMV份额上仍然居首位,并且是消费者购物的领先平台。商家将平台作为其主要电子商务业务的运营地,并且TTG拥有比竞争对手更广泛和全面的产品选择。然而,我们仍然需要对价格竞争力、服务和用户体验进行定向投资和改进。
Given that consumers use multiple platforms, returning to a user-centric approach is at the heart of our strategy. We'll increase investment in core user experiences to enhance the customer shopping experience. I'm confident that by focusing on delivering the incredible Taobao or universal Taobao experience, offering quality products at attractive prices with great service meeting the different needs of different consumer segments, TTG will earn users' trust and return to growth.
鉴于消费者使用多种平台，回归以用户为中心的方法是我们战略的核心。我们将增加对核心用户体验的投资，以增强客户的购物体验。我相信通过专注于提供令人难以置信的淘宝或者全方位的淘宝体验，以具有吸引力的价格提供优质产品和出色的服务，满足不同消费者群体的不同需求，TTG将赢得用户的信任，并实现增长。
Thus, 2024 will be a year of comprehensive capability upgrades for TTG and also a year of significant investment and we'll be prioritizing investment in the following areas. One, product supply. And we'll increase our investments in growing the selection of branded and products and direct for manufacturer products on TTG's platform. This will further strengthen our product supply advantages to better address new consumption trends and demands.
因此，2024年将是TTG全面提升能力的一年，也是重大投资的一年，我们将优先投资于以下领域。第一，产品供应。我们将增加投资，扩大TTG平台上品牌产品和制造商直供产品的选择范围。这将进一步加强我们的产品供应优势，以更好地满足新的消费趋势和需求。
Two, competitive pricing and efficiency. We'll increase investment into product sourcing capabilities and optimizing business model relationships between merchants and our platform. For different types of suppliers, we'll offer flexible business models that are best suited to improve their operational efficiency and thereby enhance Taobao's value proposition. The competitive pricing we're focused on delivering is attractive prices for quality products. This is a demand that consumers have across cycles and is fundamental to doing business.
我们将专注于两个方面，即竞争定价和效率。我们将增加对产品采购能力的投资，优化与商家以及我们平台之间的业务模式关系。针对不同类型的供应商，我们将提供灵活的业务模式，以改善他们的运营效率，从而增强淘宝的价值主张。我们专注提供的竞争定价是优质产品的吸引人价格。这是消费者在各种周期内都有的需求，是业务的基础。
Three, quality service. We will work with our merchants and logistics partners to invest in improving the entire consumer service experience including presale, in-sale, post-sale and logistics. For different customer segments on the platform, we will build a consumer service system that accurately identifies and meets the various needs of the different groups.
三个，优质的服务。我们将与我们的商家和物流合作伙伴合作，投入改善整个消费者服务体验，包括售前、售中、售后和物流。针对平台上不同的客户群体，我们将构建一个准确识别并满足不同群体需求的消费者服务体系。
Fourth, increased purchase frequency. Through the above investments, we will enhance our comprehensive capabilities to offer quality products at attractive prices with great service. We believe that improving the platform's overall shopping experience and service quality will lead to increased purchase frequency and materially improve the efficiency of user growth.
第四点是增加购买频率。通过上述投资，我们将增强我们的综合能力，以提供优质的产品、具有吸引力的价格和卓越的服务。我们相信，改善平台的整体购物体验和服务质量将导致购买频率的增加，并实质性地提高用户增长的效率。
Today, Taobao and Tmall remain the most valuable shopping platforms and the main place for merchants to do business. With the comprehensive capability planning -- building plan for 2024, we're confident that TTG will return to growth.
今天，淘宝和天猫仍然是最有价值的购物平台，也是商家进行业务的主要场所。通过2024年的全面能力规划，我们有信心TTG将重回增长轨道。
Next, I'll hand over to Jiang Fan to present on ADC.
接下来，我将转交给蒋凡来介绍ADC。
Jiang Fan
Jiang Fan
Good evening, everybody. Over the past quarter, despite the uncertain international environment and more intense market competition, AIDC achieved rapid growth. Total orders grew by 24% year-on-year driven by strong growth across all major retail platforms. Growth in our cross-border business was especially significant.
大家晚上好。在过去的一个季度里，尽管国际环境不确定，市场竞争更加激烈，AIDC取得了快速增长。受所有主要零售平台的强劲增长推动，总订单同比增长了24%。我们跨境业务的增长尤为显著。
Our three major growth drivers are; first, enhanced consumer experience as a result of our business model and supply chain services upgrade; second, product and technology innovation; and third, our targeted expansion in priority markets.
我们的三大增长驱动因素是：首先，由于我们的商业模式和供应链服务升级，消费者体验得到了提升；其次，产品和技术创新；第三，我们在重点市场的有针对性扩张。
Next, I will present our business results and future development plans around these three drivers. First is our business model and supply chain services upgrade. Last quarter, AliExpress achieved year-on-year order growth of over 60%. This was mainly driven by the new AE Choice model that we launched in early 2023. The AE Choice model is, in essence, an upgrade that we made to our original pure platform model into a hybrid business model that combines POP on the one hand with a fully entrusted model on the other and it's underpinned by supply chain efficiency. It optimizes supply on the platform by balancing experience with richness of offerings.
接下来，我将针对这三大驱动因素向大家介绍我们的业务成果和未来发展计划。首先是我们的业务模式和供应链服务升级。上一个季度，AliExpress实现了超过60%的年度订单增长。这主要是由我们在2023年初推出的新 AE Choice 模式驱动的。AE Choice 模式本质上是对我们原有的纯平台模式的升级，将其转变为一个融合了POP和全面委托模式的混合业务模式，并以供应链效率为支撑。它通过平衡经验和丰富的产品提供来优化平台供应。
By offering entrusted cross-border logistics, marketing and other services, we lower the barrier for merchants to engage in cross-border business, bringing more certainty to their operations and more diverse assortment to the platform. At the same time, we continue to enhance the end-to-end consumer experience including by providing more stable product quality and more competitive prices by continuing to optimize delivery time and by adding value-added services like local product return.
通过提供跨境物流、营销等服务，我们降低了商家参与跨境业务的门槛，为他们的运营带来更多的确定性，为平台带来更多的丰富品种。同时，我们持续改进端到端的消费者体验，包括通过优化交付时间和增加本地产品退货等增值服务，提供更加稳定的产品质量和更具竞争力的价格。
As of January 2024 choice already made up half of all AliExpress orders. It's a high-quality user experience has driven significant user growth and transaction growth on the AliExpress platform. And going forward, we'll continue to invest resolutely to further increase choice penetration and provide a better experience to more users.
截至2024年1月，Choice已经占据了AliExpress订单的一半。其高质量的用户体验推动了AliExpress平台上的用户增长和交易增长。未来，我们将继续坚定投资，以进一步提高Choice的渗透率，为更多用户提供更好的体验。
In terms of product and technology innovation, AIDC serves consumers in different countries and regions around the world. We've already optimized products in certain key countries and regions in line with local preferences. These efforts have been highly appreciated, and we'll continue to pursue that kind of innovation and upgrading. We're also actively deploying AI to enhance operating efficiency and lower barriers for merchants. Our suite of AI-based digital foreign trade products have been officially launched, enabling real-time language translation AI and logistics services, rapid generation of images and videos for marketing, et cetera.
在产品和技术创新方面，AIDC 为全球不同国家和地区的消费者提供服务。我们已根据当地偏好对某些关键国家和地区的产品进行了优化。这些努力受到了高度赞赏，而我们将继续追求这种创新和升级。我们还积极部署人工智能以提高运营效率，降低商家的门槛。我们的一套基于人工智能的数字对外贸易产品已正式推出，包括实时语言翻译人工智能和物流服务、快速生成用于营销的图像和视频等。
Third, sustained growth in key markets. In the last quarter, we achieved good growth in different regional markets. And in certain key markets, A achieved breakthrough rapid growth to become the leading platform locally. In Turkey and neighboring markets, Trendyol continue to achieve robust double-digit order growth and maintained its leading position in the Turkish market. It also further expanded its business in valuable new markets in the Middle East.
第三，主要市场持续增长。在上个季度，我们在不同的地区市场取得了良好增长。在某些主要市场，A实现了突破性的快速增长，成为当地的领先平台。在土耳其和邻近市场，Trendyol继续实现强劲的两位数订单增长，并保持在土耳其市场的领先地位。它还进一步在中东有价值的新市场扩大了业务。
In Europe, alibaba.com completed its acquisition of the well-known European B2B digital trade platform, Visable, further expanding its supplier base in the region and further advancing alibaba.com's global expansion and dual brand strategy. There is huge potential for AIDC to increase user penetration in the majority of overseas markets, building on our current resources and footprint, we will increase our investment in select regional markets where we see opportunities and value to achieve opportunities for high certainty and healthy growth.
在欧洲，alibaba.com完成了对知名欧洲B2B数字贸易平台Visable的收购，进一步扩大了该地区的供应商基础，并推动了alibaba.com的全球扩张和双品牌战略。在海外大部分市场中，自动识别与数据采集技术(AIDC)有着巨大的增加用户渗透率的潜力。依托我们当前的资源和影响力，我们将增加在某些区域市场的投资，以实现对高确定性和健康增长机遇的追求。
Going forward, we'll continue to maintain our rapid growth momentum and provide consumers with improved differentiated services. To that end, we'll continue to increase our investments in enhancing user experience and business competitiveness while expanding our business scale.
未来，我们将继续保持快速增长的势头，并为消费者提供改进的差异化服务。为实现这一目标，我们将继续增加投入，以提升用户体验和业务竞争力，并扩大业务规模。