Chinese B2B e-commerce company Alibaba has published its financial report for the first half of 2009 showing that its revenue is up but net profit is down.
According to the report, the company made total revenue of CNY1.715 billion during the first half of the year, an increase of 21% compared with the same period of 2008, but its net profit decreased from CNY697 million in the first half of 2008 to CNY514 million, a year-on-year decrease of 26.3%. Its operating profit also decreased from CNY651 million to CNY564 million, a year-on-year decrease of 13%.
By June 30, 2009, the company had had 42.78 million registered users, an increase of 31.5% over the previous year. Of the total, the number of corporate users was 5.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 46.1%, and the number of paid members was 530,000, a year-on-year increase of 44.4%.
Alibaba revealed in the report that it will implement a special dividend with total value of HKD1.01 billion, in return for the support of its shareholders.
With regards to Alibaba's future strategy, David Wei, the CEO of Alibaba, said that the company will continue to promote its loan scheme to aid the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises. With the aim of a transition from "meet at Alibaba" to "work at Alibaba", the company will establish itself as a platform that can help these SMEs with their daily operations.