Recently, Alibaba Group released its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024 ending December 31, 2023. On the earnings call, Alibaba responded positively to rumors of a sale of its traditional brick-and-mortar retail business – considering a slow exit.

Tsai Chongxin, chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, responded that in the nine months since the 2024 fiscal year, Ali has completed the exit of $1.7 billion of non-core assets, and set up a special team to execute the exit of some listed company stocks.

Mr Tsai said there were still some traditional brick-and-mortar retail businesses on the balance sheet, “which are also not our core focus and it would make perfect sense if we could complete the exit”. However, he also said that given the current market conditions, the exit will take time to materialize.

Earlier, it was reported that Alibaba Group is seeking to sell its assets such as RT-Mart and Intime in order to divestify non-core departments in the red, shift the company’s development focus to the “core profit part” of e-commerce, optimize resource allocation and focus on core business.

Previously, since Alibaba proposed the “new retail” strategy in 2015, Zhang Yong has repeatedly emphasized leading the new retail reform, saying that Alibaba has “sufficient confidence” and “a clear path” in the promotion of the new retail strategy. In the past, Ali quickly entered the offline retail market through acquisitions and investments, integrating and transforming the operating models of these enterprises to create new value for consumers.

It is reported that in the third financial quarter announced, including Sun Art retail, Hema, Yintai and other businesses of “all other” to achieve revenue of 47.023 billion yuan, down 7%; The net loss of this part was 3.172 billion yuan, an increase of 87% year-on-year. The financial report explained that the main scale of the supply chain business, and the reduction of customer unit price led to the decline in Sun Art’s retail revenue.
Source: 21st Century Business Herald, Internet