Prospectus Summary
PROSPECTUS SUMMARY This summary highlights selected information contained in greater detail elsewhere in this prospectus. This summary may not contain all of the information that you should consider before investing in our ADSs. You should carefully read the entire prospectus, including “Risk Factors” and the financial statements, before making an investment decision.Our Mission
Our mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere.
Our founders started our company to champion small businesses, in the belief that the Internet would level the playing field by enabling small enterprises to leverage innovation and technology to grow and compete more effectively in the domestic and global economies. Our decisions are guided by how they serve our mission over the long-term, not by the pursuit of short-term gains.
Our Business
We are the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume in 2013, according to industry sources. We operate our ecosystem as a platform for third parties, and we do not engage in direct sales, compete with our merchants or hold inventory.
We operate Taobao Marketplace, China’s largest online shopping destination, Tmall, China’s largest third-party platform for brands and retailers, in each case in terms of gross merchandise volume, and Juhuasuan, China’s most popular group buying marketplace by its monthly active users, in each case in 2013 according to iResearch. These three marketplaces, which comprise our China retail marketplaces, generated a combined GMV of RMB1,542 billion (US$248 billion) from 231 million active buyers and 8 million active sellers in the twelve months ended December 31, 2013. A significant portion of our customers have begun transacting on our mobile platform, and we are focused on capturing this opportunity. In the three months ended December 31, 2013, mobile GMV accounted for 19.7% of our GMV, up from 7.4% in the same period in the previous year.
In addition to our three China retail marketplaces, which accounted for 82.7% of our revenues in the nine months ended December 31, 2013, we operate Alibaba.com, China’s largest global online wholesale marketplace in 2013 by revenue, according to iResearch, 1688.com, our China wholesale marketplace, and AliExpress, our global consumer marketplace, as well as provide cloud computing services.
As a platform, we provide the fundamental technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help businesses leverage the power of the Internet to establish an online presence and conduct commerce with consumers and businesses. We have been a leader in developing online marketplace standards in China. Given the scale we have been able to achieve, an ecosystem has developed around our platform that consists of buyers, sellers, third-party service providers, strategic alliance partners, and investee companies. Our platform and the role we play in connecting buyers and sellers and making it possible for them to do business anytime and anywhere is at the nexus of this ecosystem. Much of our effort, our time and our energy is spent on initiatives that are for the greater good of the ecosystem and the various participants in it. We feel a strong responsibility for the continued development of the ecosystem and we take ownership for this development. Accordingly, we refer to this as “our ecosystem.”
Our ecosystem has strong self-reinforcing network effects that benefit our marketplace participants, who are invested in our ecosystem’s growth and success. Through this ecosystem, we have transformed how commerce is conducted in China and built a reputation as a trusted partner for the participants in our ecosystem.
We have made significant investments in proprietary technologies and infrastructure in order to support our growing ecosystem. Our technology and infrastructure allow us to harness the substantial volume of data generated from our marketplaces and to further develop and optimize the products and services offered on our platform.
Through, our related company, Alipay, we offer payment and escrow services for buyers and sellers, providing security, trust and convenience to our users. We take a platform approach to shipping and delivery by working with third-party logistics service providers through a central logistics information system operated by Zhejiang Cainiao Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd., or China Smart Logistics, our 48%-owned affiliate. Through our investment in UCWeb, we are able to leverage its expertise as a developer and operator of mobile web browsers to enhance our mobile offerings beyond e-commerce, such as general mobile search.
Our revenue is primarily generated from merchants through online marketing services (via Alimama, our proprietary online marketing platform), commissions on transactions and fees for online services. We also generate revenues through fees from memberships, value-added services and cloud computing services. In the nine months ended December 31, 2013, we generated revenue of RMB40.5 billion (US$6.5 billion) and net income of RMB17.7 billion (US$2.9 billion). Our fiscal year ends on March 31.
Our Key Metrics
We have experienced significant growth across various key metrics for our China retail marketplaces:
Our business and our ecosystem as a whole have achieved significant scale and size:
Our Scale and Size
Scale and Size of Our Ecosystem Participants
Unless otherwise indicated, all figures in the above charts are for the twelve months ended, or as of, December 31, 2013, and in the case of our scale and size, on our China retail marketplaces.The Network Effect on and across Our Marketplaces
The interactions between buyers and sellers create network effects in that more merchants attract more consumers, and more consumers attract more merchants. In addition, our marketplaces are interconnected in that many buyers and sellers on one marketplace also participate in the activities on our other marketplaces, thereby creating a second-order network effect that further strengthens our ecosystem.
The chart below depicts this network effect dynamic in our ecosystem.
Our Market Opportunity
Our market opportunity is primarily driven by the following factors:
Overall, online shopping, which represented 7.9% of total China consumption in 2013, is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 27.2% from 2013 to 2016, according to iResearch, as more consumers shop online and e-commerce spending per consumer increases.
Our Strengths
We believe that the following strengths contribute to our success and are differentiating factors that set us apart from our peers.
Our Strategies
The key elements of our strategy to grow our business include:
Alibaba Partnership
Since our founders first gathered in Jack Ma’s apartment in 1999, they and our management have acted in the spirit of partnership. We view our culture as fundamental to our success and our ability to serve our customers, develop our employees and deliver long-term value to our shareholders. In July 2010, in order to preserve this spirit of partnership and to ensure the sustainability of our mission, vision and values, we decided to formalize this partnership as Lakeside Partners, named after the “Lakeside Gardens” residential community where Jack and our other founders started our company. We refer to the partnership as the Alibaba Partnership.
We believe that our partnership approach has helped us to better manage our business, with the peer nature of the partnership enabling senior managers to collaborate and override bureaucracy and hierarchy. The Alibaba Partnership currently has 28 members comprised of 22 members of our management and six members of the management of our related companies and affiliates. The partnership operates under principles, policies and procedures that have evolved with our business and are described below.
Our partnership is a dynamic body that rejuvenates itself through admission of new partners each year, ensuring excellence, innovation and sustainability. Unlike dual-class ownership structures that employ a high-vote class of shares to concentrate control in a few founders, our approach is designed to embody the vision of a large group of management partners. This structure is our solution for preserving the culture shaped by our founders while at the same time accounting for the fact that founders will inevitably retire from the company.
Our Challenges
We believe some of the major risks and uncertainties that may materially and adversely affect us include the following:
We also face other challenges, risks and uncertainties that may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. You should consider the risks discussed in “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus before investing in our ADSs.
Corporate History and Structure
We have a demonstrated track record of successful organic business creation since our founding in 1999.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Cayman Islands holding company established on June 28, 1999, and we conduct our business in China through our subsidiaries and variable interest entities.
Due to PRC legal restrictions on foreign ownership and investment in, among other areas, value-added telecommunications services, which include Internet content providers, or ICPs, we, similar to all other entities with foreign-incorporated holding company structures operating in our industry in China, operate our Internet businesses and other businesses in which foreign investment is restricted or prohibited in the PRC through wholly-foreign owned enterprises, majority-owned entities and variable interest entities. The relevant variable interest entities, which are 100% owned by PRC citizens or by PRC entities owned by PRC citizens, hold the ICP licenses and operate the various websites for our Internet businesses. Specifically, our variable interest entities are generally majority-owned by Jack Ma, our lead founder, executive chairman and one of our principal shareholders, and minority-owned by Simon Xie, one of our founders and a member of our management. These contractual arrangements collectively enable us to exercise effective control over, and realize substantially all of the economic risks and benefits arising from, the variable interest entities. See “Our History and Corporate Structure — Contractual Arrangements among Our Wholly-foreign Owned Enterprises, Variable Interest Entities and the Variable Interest Entity Equity Holders.” The contractual arrangements may not be as effective in providing operational control as direct ownership. See “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Our Corporate Structure.”
As a result, we include the financial results of each of the variable interest entities in our consolidated financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States, or U.S. GAAP, as if they were our wholly-owned subsidiaries.
Other than the ICP licenses and other licenses and approvals for businesses in which foreign ownership is restricted or prohibited held by our variable interest entities, we hold our material assets in, and conduct our material operations through, our wholly-foreign owned and majority foreign owned enterprises, which primarily provide technology and other services to our customers. We generate the significant majority of our revenue directly through our wholly-foreign owned enterprises, which directly capture the profits and associated cash flow from operations without having to rely on contractual arrangements to transfer such cash flow from the variable interest entities to the wholly-foreign owned enterprises.
Our Corporate Information
The principal executive offices of our main operations are located at 969 West Wen Yi Road, Yu Hang District, Hangzhou 311121, People’s Republic of China. Our telephone number at this address is +86-571-8502-2077. Our registered office in the Cayman Islands is located at the offices of Trident Trust Company (Cayman) Limited, Fourth Floor, One Capital Place, P.O. Box 847, George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. Our agent for service of process in the United States is Corporation Service Company located at 1180 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 210, New York, New York 10036. Our corporate website is www.alibabagroup.com. The information contained in our websites is not a part of this prospectus.
Conventions that Apply to this Prospectus
Unless the context otherwise requires, references in this prospectus to:
Our reporting currency is the Renminbi. This prospectus also contains translations of certain foreign currency amounts into U.S. dollars for the convenience of the reader. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of Renminbi into U.S. dollars were made at RMB6.2164 to US$1.00, the exchange rate set forth in the H.10 statistical release of the Federal Reserve Board on March 31, 2014. We make no representation that the Renminbi or U.S. dollar amounts referred to in this prospectus could have been or could be converted into U.S. dollars or Renminbi, as the case may be, at any particular rate or at all. On May 2, 2014, the noon buying rate for Renminbi was RMB6.2591 to US$1.00.
The number of our ordinary shares that will be outstanding after this offering is calculated based on 2,321,114,237 ordinary shares (which includes conversion of all outstanding convertible preference shares and 12,077,421 issued but unvested restricted shares as of December 31, 2013) outstanding as of December 31, 2013, and excludes:
Except as otherwise indicated, all information in this prospectus assumes: