Alibaba names new CEO to drive expansion after revenue up 45%
Print Edition
CHINA’S biggest e-commerce operator Alibaba yesterday named a new chief executive officer to drive growth after revenue in the first quarter surged 45 percent.
Incumbent Chief Operating Officer Daniel Zhang will become CEO from Sunday while Jonathan Lu will step down and remain on the board as vice chairman. Zhang first joined the company as chief financial officer of Taobao Marketplace in August 2007 and has held a number of executive positions across different business units in the group.
“Daniel is a proven international business leader and innovator‚ and there is no better person to lead Alibaba Group into the next stage of our growth on top of the strong foundation that Jonathan helped build,” Chairman Jack Ma said in a statement yesterday.
Revenue jumped as transactions through mobile devices surged strongly, more than doubled from a year ago to US$49 billion in the three months ended on March 31.
Profit fell 49 percent to US$463 million, or 18 cents a share, mainly because of employee stock awards worth US$747 million. Per-share earnings would have gained 7 percent to 48 cents a share excluding these share-based compensation expenses, beating the 42-cent-per-share estimate by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
In March, Alibaba removed Wang Yulei, former general manager of Tmall, and promoted Zhang Jianfeng to oversee its retail business, including Tmall, Taobao and Juhuasuan, in an effort to further drive growth.
Meanwhile, Alibaba has also extended its footprint into other sectors such as health care, digital entertainment as well as offline services.
It invested at least US$2.4 billion in the past 12 months, including in Chinese smartphone maker Meizu and Kuaidi, a smartphone taxi-hailing application.
Ma identified globalization as one of the key strategies when Alibaba completed the company’s US$25 billion listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September.
International sales now made up only 9 percent of its total income, while domestic commerce took up 80 percent. The remaining portion came from value-added service such as cloud computing and Internet infrastructure services.
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