Is Alibaba Making Money? — Market Mad House

The Alibaba Holding Group (NYSE: BABA) is one of the biggest success stories in online retail. Alibaba reported quarterly revenues of $16.815 billion and a quarterly gross profit of $7.589 billion on 30 June 2019, for example.

Astonishingly, Statista estimates Alibaba’s platforms had 674 million active online consumers in 2nd Quarter 2019. Remarkably, that number grew from 576 million consumers in 2nd Quarter 2018 and 279 million active customers in 2nd Quarter 2014.

In contrast, there were 2.63 billion visits to Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) between February 2018 and 2019, Hostsorter estimates. Unfortunately, the most recent active account estimate I could for Amazon is from 1st Quarter 2016. Statista estimates Amazon had 310 million active customers four years ago.

Amazon vs. Alibaba

Alibaba’s numbers are impressive but small when compared to Amazon. Amazon reported quarterly revenues of $63.404 billion and a quarterly gross profit of $27.067 billion on 30 June 2019, for instance.

Thus, Alibaba’s quarterly revenues are less than a third the size of Amazon’s. However, I think Alibaba still makes impressive amounts of money. In particular, Stockrow gives Alibaba an operating income of $3.603 billion and a net income comparison of $3.109 billion for the quarter…