Alibaba.com Limited released its unaudited results for the six months ended June 30, 2008, and CEO David Wei commented on the results. As of June 30, 2008, the company's combined marketplaces had 32.5 million registered users, an increase of 32.5% year-on-year, of which 5.6 million were from the international marketplace and 26.9 million from the China marketplace.
As of June 30, 2008, the total number of storefronts on its marketplaces grew to 3.8 million, an increase of 54.1% year-on-year. Alibaba had 802,286 storefronts on its international marketplace and 3 million storefronts on its China marketplace.
The number of paying members of its combined marketplaces was 368,006, an increase of 44.0% year-on-year, which consisted of 29,766 Gold Supplier members and 13,912 International TrustPass members from the international marketplace, and 324,328 China TrustPass members from the China marketplace.
"In the first six months of 2008 we reported healthy growth in revenue and profitability, despite a weakening global economy," said David Wei, CEO of Alibaba.com. "The network effect of our marketplaces continued to strengthen. We posted steady increases in registered users, supplier storefronts and paying members, reinforcing our position as the world's leading B2B e-marketplace. Our fast-growing China marketplace continued to contribute an increasing proportion of our overall revenue mix during the first half, demonstrating the rising importance of domestic China traders to our business. We also made significant progress in our global expansion efforts by forming partnerships in India and Japan and opening a sales office in Taiwan. We will further accelerate our globalization plans in the future.
"With a slowing global economy, high commodity prices and policies by the Chinese government towards the export manufacturing sector, we are beginning to feel the impact on our customers' businesses as well as on our own. This "economic winter" is making it difficult for some of our customers to conduct business and as a result we have seen a slowdown in the addition of Gold Supplier members, which may continue until next year. We believe that this is a cyclical situation and that in the long run Chinese exports will remain very competitive in the world market. We are taking a number of steps to help our SME customers weather this difficult time, including lowering the entry barriers for SMEs to do business online, helping more SMEs use e-commerce to conduct business, increasing our investment in user acquisition, and enhancing customer satisfaction.
"Despite the impact the current climate is having on Gold Supplier members in our international marketplace, our China marketplace grew very quickly in the first half of 2008. This growth is a result of efforts taken over the past few years to expand the network effect of our marketplace and maintain high customer satisfaction levels, which are bearing fruit in the face of a strong domestic economy. Going forward, we expect the robust growth of our China marketplace to continue. The recent launches of a series of new products and services including "Winport," "China TrustPass for Individuals" and "Export-to-China" will further expand our China marketplace and we are encouraged by the positive response these initiatives have received so far."
