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Alibaba: E-commerce Declines Again, AI Is the Great Savior
Alibaba is simultaneously attacking two fronts—takeout and AI. Tonight (3/19), before the US stock market opens, it released its fiscal year 26 Q3 earnings. Overall, from the perspective of expectations, aside from weaker growth in international e-commerce and higher losses in other businesses, the performance is close to the latest lowered guidance. But in absolute terms, it is undoubtedly weaker.
The main reasons are the end of the core e-commerce growth cycle after the red envelope subsidies and higher monetization rates, leading to a significant slowdown in growth in the core e-commerce sector. On a positive note, Alibaba Cloud’s growth remains relatively strong. Specifically:
Since Bloomberg’s consensus expectations were not updated in time, their reference value is limited. Below, we analyze based on the latest analyst expectations:
1. CMR growth less than 1%:
The core indicator of traditional remote e-commerce—CMR increased by 0.8% year-over-year this quarter, a sharp slowdown from 10% in the previous quarter. Similar to JD.com, partly due to the decline of national subsidies in 2025 & high base in 2024, and also because Spring Festival was later, leading to more domestic shopping being released in Q1 2026.
Additionally, the 0.6% service fee and site-wide promotion tools introduced from September 2024 have run their course, which previously boosted monetization rates.
These factors combined caused a rapid slowdown in CMR growth. Fortunately, the company had communicated sufficiently with the market beforehand, and actual performance was roughly in line with expectations.
2. Takeout losses reduced as expected, but progress is not very good:
China e-commerce group’s adjusted EBITA this quarter was 34.6 billion yuan, down about 26.5 billion from the same period last year. Considering CMR nearly unchanged, and assuming conservatively that the profit of the original Taobao Tmall Group slightly declined YoY this quarter, we back-calculate that the net loss of Flash Sale this quarter is about 25 billion yuan.
Although losses are significantly reduced from last quarter (indicating improvement in Flash Sale UE), they are still at the upper limit of market expectations (200–250 billion yuan), showing that the pace of improvement is not as fast as hoped.
Based on Dolphin’s estimates, the average loss per order for Taobao Flash Sale roughly narrowed from over 5 yuan last quarter to about 3.5 yuan this quarter (no official data; for reference only).
3. Alibaba Cloud accelerates again, still impressive:
Fortunately, Alibaba’s AI front remains strong. Alibaba Cloud revenue grew 36%, continuing to slightly accelerate as expected.
While not exceeding expectations and the acceleration seems modest, Alibaba Cloud’s external revenue grew 35% this quarter versus 29% last quarter, a significant acceleration. From the group’s overall perspective, this rapid external revenue growth is more valuable.
Additionally, the company stated that over the past three months, token consumption on the Baolian MaaS platform’s public model service market increased sixfold (the evolution from Chatbot to Agent doubles the demand for tokens and computing power), so Dolphin remains optimistic about long-term cloud computing demand.
Meanwhile, Alibaba Cloud’s profit margin this quarter was 9%, unchanged from last quarter, indicating no drag on profit margin from increased AI business proportion, which is quite good.
Capex this quarter was 29.9 billion yuan, down from last quarter, possibly affected by Nvidia chip bans. Given Alibaba’s previously aggressive investments and the market’s increased focus on ROI, reduced investment may not be a bad thing. As a result, Alibaba’s free cash flow turned positive again this quarter.
4. International e-commerce growth slowed again, with losses resumed:
This quarter, international e-commerce revenue growth slowed to less than 4%, lower than the revised market expectation (~7%), mainly dragged down by Lazada’s negative revenue growth. It appears that in Southeast Asia, facing aggressive expansion by Sea and Tmall Global, Alibaba International faces significant competitive pressure.
Meanwhile, adjusted EBITA for international e-commerce turned negative again, at 2 billion yuan. However, this is mainly seasonal, related to major sales events like Black Friday, and still less loss than the 5 billion in 3Q FY25, indicating no shift back to an investment cycle. The company will continue to focus on refined operations.
5. Other smaller businesses also start investing:
This quarter, losses in other businesses expanded significantly to about 9.8 billion yuan, much higher than the previously revised estimate of 8.5 billion.
Investments in AI applications like Gaode Street Map, Qianwen/Quark apps, and customer acquisition efforts are reasons for the increased losses, which are understandable but large in scale.
Considering that in the December quarter, Qianwen had not yet fully launched, and during Spring Festival there were red envelopes and free cards, losses in other businesses next quarter are unlikely to be much lower.
6. Overall performance:
This quarter, Alibaba’s total revenue was about 284.8 billion yuan, up 1.7% YoY.
Excluding the impact of divestments of Intime and Gaoxin, the comparable growth rate is 9% vs. 15% last quarter.
This slowdown is mainly due to the significant deceleration in domestic and overseas e-commerce growth.
Adding back the gross profit impact of stock-based compensation, which decreased 2% YoY, gross margin also declined by 1.5 percentage points, with the decline widening.
The main factor is likely the increased distribution costs from instant retail, and other expanding losses also contributed.
The most notable expense is marketing costs, which reached 70.9 billion yuan this quarter, up 28.8 billion from last year, surpassing the losses from Flash Sale, clearly indicating increased customer acquisition investments across other business segments.
The group’s adjusted EBITA was 23.4 billion yuan, a significant improvement from less than 10 billion last quarter due to narrower takeout losses, but beyond that, core Taobao Tmall profits may decline YoY, international e-commerce turned negative again, and losses in new businesses expanded beyond expectations, making overall profit trends quite poor.
Dolphin’s analysis:
1. First, the quarterly performance was clearly weak:
a. The core remote e-commerce business—**CMR of 1027 billion yuan, up 0.8% YoY—**showed a sharp slowdown. Similar to JD.com, the slowdown mainly results from the decline of 2025 national subsidies & high base in 2024, and also because Spring Festival was later, leading to only 2.3% growth in Q4 online retail, with Taobao Tmall GMV growing slightly below the industry.
b. Additionally, the 0.6% service fee and site-wide promotion tools introduced from September 2024 have run their course, which narrows the gap between CMR and GMV growth.
c. Although absolute performance is poor, the company has communicated with the market enough, lowering expectations, so actual results are roughly in line with expectations.
2. Outlook for the future:
a. Remote e-commerce: The “cornerstone” business, due to the likely smaller impact of 2026 national subsidies compared to 2025, and the recent domestic AI-driven substitution of labor, the growth outlook for China’s e-commerce in 2026 is not very optimistic.
However, one reason for the weak Q4 2025 e-commerce growth was the delayed consumption post-Spring Festival. Recent data shows online sales from January-February increased over 10%, a clear rebound.
The combined online retail growth for Q4 2025 + the first two months of 2026 is about 5.4%, a slowdown but not too bad.
Thus, Dolphin expects full-year 2026 e-commerce sales growth to be modest, but the lowest point in Q4 2025 may already be behind us.
Another point is that the benefits from the 0.6% service fee and site-wide promotion tools are mostly exhausted. Also, since October 2025, stricter taxation on e-commerce merchants (from self-declaration to platform-assisted tax reporting), especially for small and medium merchants, means higher taxes/profits pressure, potentially reducing their advertising spend capacity.
These factors suggest that relying on improving monetization rates to boost revenue may become more difficult.
b. Instant retail: Although subsidies for Alibaba and Meituan in instant retail have decreased since Q3 FY25, and market focus has shifted from “takeout wars” to “AI wars,” the order volume and subsidy levels remain tightly linked.
Alibaba management previously stated that “the goal of instant retail is to become the market leader,” implying the competition and subsidy reductions in takeout won’t end soon. The recent near-maximum losses in Flash Sale support this view.
Although recent surveys suggest Taobao Flash Sale’s order structure is improving (more high-ticket meals and non-meal retail), the results haven’t yet shown significant benefits.
Based on recent estimates, the total budget for Taobao Flash Sale in 2026 is over 700 billion yuan, similar to the total investment in 2025.
If true, the quarterly investment and losses in 2026 will decrease, but overall, the scale remains large.
3. Chips + Cloud + Models: the best domestic AI story:
Like Google, Alibaba’s “PingTouGe” (self-developed chips), Alibaba Cloud (cloud services), and Qianwen family (models and apps) form China’s most comprehensive AI stack and the best story to tell about AI.
Within large-cap companies, Alibaba remains one of the top choices for AI development funding. The mid-term narrative of this core line is unlikely to change significantly despite recent weak performance.
Recent developments include:
This shift could lead to:
a. Agents demand exponentially more computing power and tokens, boosting supply-side demand. Recent price hikes by Alibaba Cloud likely reflect this.
b. With limited computing resources, more focus on Agent apps (targeting office and B2B scenarios), which have stronger user willingness to pay and generate immediate revenue via token payments. This benefits cloud/model companies to generate early revenue and profit from AI.
4. Impact of forming the ATH division:
Another major change is Alibaba’s announcement to combine the Logic Lab, Alibaba Cloud’s MaaS unit, Qianwen, Wukong, and AI Innovation into the Alibaba Token Hub (ATH) group.
The main reason is that tokens have become the largest growth driver after the Chatbot-to-Agent iteration.
Dolphin believes this restructuring’s key benefit is integrating upstream model R&D, midstream selling compute power/models, and downstream applications (C2B/C2C), which will facilitate alignment of technology development and product needs, improve internal communication, and unify goals.
Instead of model R&D focusing solely on technological advancement, and application teams only on KPIs like user numbers, this structure promotes synergy.
Another less critical but potentially impactful change is that Alibaba Cloud moving from selling raw compute (bare-metal) to MaaS or token-based models (pre-configured models on hardware), which could increase revenue and profit margins, possibly accelerating Alibaba Cloud revenue growth and margins beyond expectations.
Below is a detailed performance analysis:
I. Alibaba’s new reporting approach:
In FY26, with Ele.me’s instant retail and Fliggy’s travel businesses merged into the new China E-commerce Group, Alibaba’s organizational structure and financial reporting have been updated.
The new structure divides Alibaba into four main segments:
II. Core e-commerce growth remains steady:
Core business—remote e-commerce:
**CMR this quarter was 1027 billion yuan, up 0.8% YoY—**a significant slowdown. Similar to JD.com, the slowdown mainly results from the decline of 2025 national subsidies & high base in 2024, and the later Spring Festival, leading to only 2.3% growth in Q4 online retail, with Taobao Tmall GMV slightly below industry growth.
Additionally, the 0.6% service fee and site-wide promotion tools introduced from September 2024 have run their course, narrowing the gap between CMR and GMV growth.
While absolute performance is weak, the company has communicated enough, lowering expectations, so actual results are roughly in line with guidance.
Taobao Flash Sale + Ele.me:
This quarter, Taobao instant retail revenue was nearly 20.8 billion yuan, up 56% YoY, but down 9% QoQ, slightly below Dolphin’s expectations.
Seasonality affects order volume, but the expectation was that optimized order structure (more high-value meals and non-meal retail) would boost average revenue per order.
However, the increase appears less than expected.
Self-operated retail (including related fulfillment revenue):
This segment grew only 0.3% YoY, similar to CMR, mainly due to overall slowdown in domestic e-commerce.
1688 wholesale business maintained higher growth at 5.3%, driven by membership-related services.
Overall, as CMR and other segments slow with industry trends, Flash Sale revenue remains high-growth, and total domestic e-commerce revenue growth is about 5.8%.
III. Takeout losses are not recovering as fast as hoped:
Despite reduced market focus on “takeout wars,” the scale of investment and losses in Flash Sale still heavily impact profits.
China E-commerce Group’s adjusted EBITA was 34.6 billion yuan, down about 26.5 billion from last year.
Given that CMR and other revenues are nearly flat, assuming the original Taobao Tmall Group’s profit is slightly down YoY, we estimate Flash Sale’s net loss this quarter at about 25 billion yuan (for reference).
While this is a significant improvement from last quarter’s estimated 36 billion loss, it remains at the upper end of market expectations (200–250 billion), implying the speed of improvement is slower than expected.
Based on recent surveys, average loss per order for Taobao Flash Sale roughly narrowed from over 5 yuan last quarter to about 3.5 yuan this quarter (no official data; approximate).
IV. The biggest highlight—Alibaba Cloud continues to accelerate:
In the AI/cloud segment, Alibaba’s performance remains impressive. Alibaba Cloud revenue grew 36%, slightly faster than last quarter’s 34.5%.
While not exceeding expectations, external revenue growth was 35% this quarter versus 29% last quarter, a significant acceleration.
This indicates the actual external demand is strong, with AI-related revenue maintaining triple-digit growth.
Recent data shows that token consumption on the Baolian MaaS platform’s public models increased sixfold over the past three months, and MaaS is expected to become Alibaba Cloud’s largest revenue product, supporting Dolphin’s long-term optimism for cloud computing demand.
Profitability-wise, Alibaba Cloud’s adjusted EBITA margin was 9%, unchanged from last quarter, indicating no profit margin drag from AI’s increased share, which is quite good.
Capex this quarter was 29.9 billion yuan, down from last quarter, possibly affected by Nvidia chip bans. Given Alibaba’s previous aggressive investments and the market’s focus on ROI, reduced Capex may be positive. As a result, Alibaba’s free cash flow turned positive again this quarter.
V. International e-commerce growth slowed again, with losses resumed—maintaining refined operations:
This quarter, international e-commerce revenue growth slowed to less than 4%, below the revised market expectation (~7%), mainly due to Lazada’s negative revenue growth.
It appears that in Southeast Asia, facing fierce competition from Sea and Tmall Global, Alibaba International faces significant challenges.
Adjusted EBITA for international e-commerce turned negative again, at 2 billion yuan, but this is seasonal, related to major sales events, and less loss than the 5 billion in 3Q FY25, indicating ongoing cost control.
The company emphasizes that this is seasonal and does not signal a shift back to an investment cycle; it will continue refined operations.
VI. Other smaller businesses also start investing heavily:
This quarter, losses in other businesses expanded to about 9.8 billion yuan, much higher than the previously estimated 8.5 billion.
Investments in AI applications like Gaode Street Map, Qianwen, Quark apps, and customer acquisition efforts explain the increased losses, which are understandable but large.
Considering that in the December quarter, Qianwen had not yet fully launched, and during Spring Festival there were red envelopes and free cards, losses in other businesses next quarter are unlikely to be much lower.
VII. Overall performance roughly meets lowered expectations but is weak in absolute terms:
This quarter, Alibaba’s total revenue was about 284.8 billion yuan, up 1.7% YoY.
Excluding divestments of Intime and Gaoxin, the comparable growth is 9% vs. 15% last quarter.
This slowdown mainly reflects the deceleration in domestic and international e-commerce.
Adding back the gross profit impact of stock-based compensation, which decreased 2% YoY, gross margin declined by 1.5 percentage points, with the decline widening.
The main reason is the increased distribution costs from instant retail, and other losses also contributed.
The most notable expense is marketing costs, which reached 70.9 billion yuan this quarter, up 28.8 billion from last year, surpassing Flash Sale losses, clearly indicating increased customer acquisition investments across segments.
The group’s adjusted EBITA was 23.4 billion yuan, a significant improvement from less than 10 billion last quarter due to narrower takeout losses, but beyond that, core Taobao Tmall profits may decline YoY, international e-commerce turned negative again, and losses in new businesses expanded beyond expectations, making overall profit trends weak.
Dolphin’s conclusion:
1. First, the quarterly performance was clearly weak:
a. The core remote e-commerce—**CMR of 1027 billion yuan, up 0.8% YoY—**showed a sharp slowdown. Similar to JD.com, mainly due to the decline of 2025 subsidies & high base in 2024, and later Spring Festival, leading to only 2.3% growth in Q4 online retail, with Taobao Tmall GMV slightly below industry.
b. The 0.6% service fee and site-wide promotion tools introduced from September 2024 have run their course, narrowing the gap between CMR and GMV growth.
c. Despite weak absolute performance, the company has communicated enough, lowering expectations, so actual results are roughly in line with guidance.
2. Outlook for the future:
a. Remote e-commerce: The “cornerstone” business, due to likely smaller impact of 2026 subsidies compared to 2025, and recent AI-driven labor substitution, growth in China’s e-commerce in 2026 is not very optimistic.
However, one reason for weak Q4 2025 growth was delayed consumption after Spring Festival. Recent data shows online sales in Jan-Feb increased over 10%, a rebound.
The combined online retail growth for Q4 2025 + the first two months of 2026 is about 5.4%, a slowdown but manageable.
Thus, Dolphin expects full-year 2026 e-commerce growth to be modest, but the worst in Q4 2025 may be behind us.
Another point is that the benefits from the 0.6% service fee and promotion tools are mostly exhausted. Also, since October 2025, stricter taxation on merchants (from self-declaration to platform-assisted tax reporting), especially for small and medium merchants, means higher taxes/profits pressure, possibly reducing their advertising spend capacity.
These factors suggest that relying on improving monetization to boost revenue may be more difficult.
b. Instant retail: Despite reduced subsidies, the scale of investment and losses remains large, heavily impacting profits.
China E-commerce Group’s adjusted EBITA was 34.6 billion yuan, down about 26.5 billion YoY.
Given that CMR and other revenues are nearly flat, assuming the original Taobao Tmall profit is slightly down YoY, we estimate Flash Sale’s net loss this quarter at about 25 billion yuan.
While this is a significant improvement from last quarter’s estimated 36 billion loss, it still is at the upper end of market expectations (200–250 billion), implying the speed of recovery is slower than hoped.
Based on recent surveys, average loss per order for Taobao Flash Sale roughly narrowed from over 5 yuan last quarter to about 3.5 yuan this quarter (no official data; approximate).
3. The biggest highlight—Alibaba Cloud continues to accelerate:
In the AI/cloud segment, Alibaba’s performance remains impressive. Alibaba Cloud revenue grew 36%, slightly faster than last quarter’s 34.5%.
While not exceeding expectations, external revenue growth was 35% this quarter versus 29% last quarter, a significant acceleration.
This indicates the external demand is strong, with AI-related revenue maintaining triple-digit growth.
Recent data shows that token consumption on the Baolian MaaS platform’s public models increased sixfold over the past three months, and MaaS is expected to become Alibaba Cloud’s largest revenue product, supporting Dolphin’s long-term optimism for cloud computing demand.
Profitability-wise, Alibaba Cloud’s adjusted EBITA margin was 9%, unchanged from last quarter, indicating no profit margin drag from AI’s increased share, which is quite good.
Capex this quarter was 29.9 billion yuan, down from last quarter, possibly affected by Nvidia chip bans. Given Alibaba’s previous aggressive investments and the market’s focus on ROI, reduced Capex may be positive. As a result, Alibaba’s free cash flow turned positive again this quarter.
5. International e-commerce growth slowed again, with losses resumed—maintaining refined operations:
This quarter, international e-commerce revenue growth slowed to less than 4%, below the revised market expectation (~7%), mainly due to Lazada’s negative revenue growth.
It appears that in Southeast Asia, facing fierce competition from Sea and Tmall Global, Alibaba International faces significant challenges.
Adjusted EBITA for international e-commerce turned negative again, at 2 billion yuan, but this is seasonal, related to major sales events, and less loss than the 5 billion in 3Q FY25, indicating ongoing cost control.
The company emphasizes that this is seasonal and does not signal a shift back to an investment cycle; it will continue refined operations.
6. Other smaller businesses also start investing heavily:
This quarter, losses in other businesses expanded to about 9.8 billion yuan, much higher than the previously estimated 8.5 billion.
Investments in AI applications like Gaode Street Map, Qianwen, Quark apps, and customer acquisition efforts explain the increased losses, which are understandable but large.
Considering that in the December quarter, Qianwen had not yet fully launched, and during Spring Festival there were red envelopes and free cards, losses in other businesses next quarter are unlikely to be much lower.
7. Overall, performance roughly aligns with the lowered guidance but remains weak in absolute terms:
This quarter, Alibaba’s total revenue was about 2848 billion yuan, up 1.7% YoY.
Excluding the divestments of Intime and Gaoxin, the comparable growth is 9% vs. 15% last quarter.
This slowdown mainly results from the deceleration of domestic and international e-commerce.
Adding back the gross profit impact of stock-based compensation, which decreased 2% YoY, gross margin declined by 1.5 percentage points, with the decline widening.
The main factor is the increased distribution costs from instant retail, and other losses also contributed.
The most notable expense is marketing, which reached 70.9 billion yuan this quarter, up 28.8 billion from last year, surpassing Flash Sale losses, clearly indicating increased customer acquisition investments.
The group’s adjusted EBITA was 23.4 billion yuan, a significant improvement from less than 10 billion last quarter, but beyond that, core Taobao Tmall profits may decline YoY, international e-commerce turned negative again, and losses in new businesses expanded beyond expectations, indicating overall profit performance is weak.
Dolphin’s view:
1. First, the quarterly results are clearly weak:
a. The core remote e-commerce—**CMR of 1027 billion yuan, up 0.8% YoY—**showed a sharp slowdown. Similar to JD.com, mainly due to the decline of 2025 subsidies & high base in 2024, and later Spring Festival, leading to only 2.3% growth in Q4 online retail, with Taobao Tmall GMV slightly below industry.
b. The 0.6% service fee and site-wide promotion tools introduced from September 2024 have run their course, narrowing the gap between CMR and GMV growth.
c. Despite weak absolute performance, the company has communicated enough, lowering expectations, so actual results are roughly in line with guidance.
2. Outlook:
a. Remote e-commerce: The “cornerstone” business, due to likely smaller impact of 2026 subsidies compared to 2025, and recent AI-driven labor substitution, growth in China’s e-commerce in 2026 is not very optimistic.
However, one reason for weak Q4 2025 growth was delayed consumption after Spring Festival. Recent data shows online sales in Jan-Feb increased over 10%, a rebound.
The combined online retail growth for Q4 2025 + the first two months of 2026 is about 5.4%, a slowdown but manageable.
Thus, Dolphin expects full-year 2026 e-commerce growth to be modest, but the worst in Q4 2025 may already be behind us.
Another point is that the benefits from the 0.6% service fee and promotion tools are mostly exhausted. Also, since October 2025, stricter taxation on merchants (from self-declaration to platform-assisted tax reporting), especially for small and medium merchants, means higher taxes/profits pressure, possibly reducing their advertising spend capacity.
These factors suggest that relying on improving monetization to boost revenue may be more difficult.
b. Instant retail: Despite reduced subsidies, the scale of investment and losses remains large, heavily impacting profits.
China E-commerce Group’s adjusted EBITA was 34.6 billion yuan, down about 26.5 billion YoY.
Given that CMR and other revenues are nearly flat, assuming the original Taobao Tmall profit is slightly down YoY, we estimate Flash Sale’s net loss this quarter at about 25 billion yuan.
While this is a significant improvement from last quarter’s estimated 36 billion loss, it still is at the upper end of market expectations (200–250 billion), implying the speed of recovery is slower than hoped.
Based on recent surveys, average loss per order for Taobao Flash Sale roughly narrowed from over 5 yuan last quarter to about 3.5 yuan this quarter (no official data; approximate).
3. The biggest highlight—Alibaba Cloud continues to accelerate:
In the AI/cloud segment, Alibaba’s performance remains impressive. Alibaba Cloud revenue grew 36%, slightly faster than last quarter’s 34.5%.
While not exceeding expectations, external revenue growth was 35% this quarter versus 29% last quarter, a significant acceleration.
This indicates the external demand is strong, with AI-related revenue maintaining triple-digit growth.
Recent data shows that token consumption on the Baolian MaaS platform’s public models increased sixfold over the past three months, and MaaS is expected to become Alibaba Cloud’s largest revenue product, supporting Dolphin’s long-term optimism for cloud computing demand.
Profitability-wise, Alibaba Cloud’s adjusted EBITA margin was 9%, unchanged from last quarter, indicating no profit margin drag from AI’s increased share, which is quite good.
Capex this quarter was 29.9 billion yuan, down from last quarter, possibly affected by Nvidia chip bans. Given Alibaba’s previous aggressive investments and the market’s focus on ROI, reduced Capex may be positive. As a result, Alibaba’s free cash flow turned positive again this quarter.
5. International e-commerce growth slowed again, with losses resumed—maintaining refined operations:
This quarter, international e-commerce revenue growth slowed to less than 4%, below the revised market expectation (~7%), mainly due to Lazada’s negative revenue growth.
It appears that in Southeast Asia, facing fierce competition from Sea and Tmall Global, Alibaba International faces significant challenges.
Adjusted EBITA for international e-commerce turned negative again, at 2 billion yuan, but this is seasonal, related to major sales events, and less loss than the 5 billion in 3Q FY25, indicating ongoing cost control.
The company emphasizes that this is seasonal and does not signal a shift back to an investment cycle; it will continue refined operations.
6. Other smaller businesses also start investing heavily:
This quarter, losses in other businesses expanded to about 9.8 billion yuan, much higher than the previously estimated 8.5 billion.
Investments in AI applications like Gaode Street Map, Qianwen, Quark apps, and customer acquisition efforts explain the increased losses, which are understandable but large.
Considering that in the December quarter, Qianwen had not yet fully launched, and during Spring Festival there were red envelopes and free cards, losses in other businesses next quarter are unlikely to be much lower.
7. Overall, results are roughly in line with the lowered guidance but are weak in absolute terms:
This quarter, Alibaba’s total revenue was about 2848 billion yuan, up 1.7% YoY.
Excluding divestments of Intime and Gaoxin, the comparable growth is 9% vs. 15% last quarter.
This slowdown mainly results from the deceleration of domestic and international e-commerce.
Adding back the gross profit impact of stock-based compensation, which decreased 2% YoY, gross margin declined by 1.5 percentage points, with the decline widening.
The main reason is the increased distribution costs from instant retail, and other losses also contributed.
The most notable expense is marketing, which reached 70.9 billion yuan this quarter, up 28.8 billion from last year, surpassing Flash Sale losses, clearly indicating increased customer acquisition investments.
The group’s adjusted EBITA was 23.4 billion yuan, a significant improvement from less than 10 billion last quarter, but beyond that, core Taobao Tmall profits may decline YoY, international e-commerce turned negative again, and losses in new businesses expanded beyond expectations, indicating overall profit performance is weak.
Dolphin’s conclusion:
1. First, the quarterly results are clearly weak:
a. The core remote e-commerce—**CMR of 1027 billion yuan, up 0.8% YoY—**showed a sharp slowdown. Similar to JD.com, mainly due to the decline of 2025 subsidies & high base in 2024, and later Spring Festival, leading to only 2.3% growth in Q4 online retail, with Taobao Tmall GMV slightly below industry.
b. The 0.6% service fee and site-wide promotion tools introduced from September 2024 have run their course, narrowing the gap between CMR and GMV growth.
c. Despite weak absolute performance, the company has communicated enough, lowering expectations, so actual results are roughly in line with guidance.
2. Outlook:
a. Remote e-commerce: The “cornerstone” business, due to likely smaller impact of 2026 subsidies compared to 2025, and recent AI-driven labor substitution, growth in China’s e-commerce in 2026 is not very optimistic.
However, one reason for weak Q4 2025 growth was delayed consumption after Spring Festival. Recent data shows online sales in Jan-Feb increased over 10%, a rebound.
The combined online retail growth for Q4 2025 + the first two months of 2026 is about 5.4%, a slowdown but manageable.
Thus, Dolphin expects full-year 2026 e-commerce growth to be modest, but the worst in Q4 2025 may already be behind us.
Another point is that the benefits from the 0.6% service fee and promotion tools are mostly exhausted. Also, since October 2025, stricter taxation on merchants (from self-declaration to platform-assisted tax reporting), especially for small and medium merchants, means higher taxes/profits pressure, possibly reducing their advertising spend capacity.
These factors suggest that relying on improving monetization to boost revenue may be more difficult.
b. Instant retail: Despite reduced subsidies, the scale of investment and losses remains large, heavily impacting profits.
China E-commerce Group’s adjusted EBITA was 34.6 billion yuan, down about 26.5 billion YoY.
Given that CMR and other revenues are nearly flat, assuming the original Taobao Tmall profit is slightly down YoY, we estimate Flash Sale’s net loss this quarter at about 25 billion yuan.
While this is a significant improvement from last quarter’s estimated 36 billion loss, it still is at the upper end of market expectations (200–250 billion), implying the speed of recovery is slower than hoped.
Based on recent surveys, average loss per order for Taobao Flash Sale roughly narrowed from over 5 yuan last quarter to about 3.5 yuan this quarter (no official data; approximate).
3. The biggest highlight—Alibaba Cloud continues to accelerate:
In the AI/cloud segment, Alibaba’s performance remains impressive. Alibaba Cloud revenue grew 36%, slightly faster than last quarter’s 34.5%.
While not exceeding expectations, external revenue growth was 35% this quarter versus 29% last quarter, a significant acceleration.
This indicates the external demand is strong, with AI-related revenue maintaining triple-digit growth.
Recent data shows that token consumption on the Baolian MaaS platform’s public models increased sixfold over the past three months, and MaaS is expected to become Alibaba Cloud’s largest revenue product, supporting Dolphin’s long-term optimism for cloud computing demand.
Profitability-wise, Alibaba Cloud’s adjusted EBITA margin was 9%, unchanged from last quarter, indicating no profit margin drag from AI’s increased share, which is quite good.
Capex this quarter was 29.9 billion yuan, down from last quarter, possibly affected by Nvidia chip bans. Given Alibaba’s previous aggressive investments and the market’s focus on ROI, reduced Capex may be positive. As a result, Alibaba’s free cash flow turned positive again this quarter.
5. International e-commerce growth slowed again, with losses resumed—maintaining refined operations:
This quarter, international e-commerce revenue growth slowed to less than 4%, below the revised market expectation (~7%), mainly due to Lazada’s negative revenue growth.
It appears that in Southeast Asia, facing fierce competition from Sea and Tmall Global, Alibaba International faces significant challenges.
Adjusted EBITA for international e-commerce turned negative again, at 2 billion yuan, but this is seasonal, related to major sales events, and less loss than the 5 billion in 3Q FY25, indicating ongoing cost control.
The company emphasizes that this is seasonal and does not signal a shift back to an investment cycle; it will continue refined operations.
6. Other smaller businesses also start investing heavily:
This quarter, losses in other businesses expanded to about 9.8 billion yuan, much higher than the previously estimated 8.5 billion.
Investments in AI applications like Gaode Street Map, Qianwen, Quark apps, and customer acquisition efforts explain the increased losses, which are understandable but large.
Considering that in the December quarter, Qianwen had not yet fully launched, and during Spring Festival there were red envelopes and free cards, losses in other businesses next quarter are unlikely to be much lower.
7. Overall, results are roughly in line with the lowered guidance but are weak in absolute terms:
This quarter, Alibaba’s total revenue was about 2848 billion yuan, up 1.7% YoY.
Excluding the divestments of Intime and Gaoxin, the comparable growth is 9% vs. 15% last quarter.
This slowdown mainly results from the deceleration of domestic and international e-commerce.
Adding back the gross profit impact of stock-based compensation, which decreased 2% YoY, gross margin declined by 1.5