China’s Alibaba is forecasting annual revenue growth of 45 to 49 per cent this year, a target that exceeds analysts’ estimates by 10 percentage points and elicited gasps of “wow” and loud clapping from investors at the ecommerce group’s Hangzhou headquarters.
中国的阿里巴巴(Alibaba)预测2018财年将实现45%至49%的全年营收增长，这个目标比分析师们的估计高出10个百分点，让聚集在这家电商集团杭州总部的投资者发出惊叹声和响亮的掌声。
Analysts had been expecting revenues this year to come in at $31.42bn, according to Bloomberg. Alibaba’s forecast implies sales of up to $34.3bn in the year to the end of March.彭博(Bloomberg)数据显示，此前分析师们预计2018财年营收将达到314.2亿美元。阿里巴巴的预测表明，其在截至明年3月底的一年里营收将高达343亿美元。The bullish call highlights the rise of Alibaba, founded by former teacher — and now China’s richest man — Jack Ma. The ecommerce group has spawned an entire ecosystem comprising logistics, payment and cloud data centres which has made the company, along with fellow tech titans Baidu and Tencent, a big part of daily life in China.这一乐观预测突显了阿里巴巴的崛起，其创始人马云(Jack Ma)曾经是一名教师，现在是中国首富。这家电商集团已经催生了一个完整的生态系统，包括物流、支付和云数据中心，使该公司和另外两家科技巨擘——百度(Baidu)和腾讯(Tencent)——成为中国日常生活的重要组成部分。The guidance puts Alibaba, which in May recorded its biggest quarterly rise in revenues since its blockbuster initial public offering in 2014, on track for its biggest annual underlying rise so far, said Maggie Wu, chief financial officer, addressing analysts at the company’s investor day.首席财务官武卫(Maggie Wu)在该公司的投资者日对分析师们表示，这一指引意味着阿里巴巴将实现迄今最大幅度的年度基础业绩增长。今年5月，阿里巴巴报告了自2014年进行巨额首次公开发行(IPO)以来最大的季度营收增长。Last year revenues increased by 56 per cent, but that included Lazada, the Southeast Asian ecommerce group that was consolidated into Alibaba’s numbers from April. Stripping that out, said Ms Wu, would have whittled last year’s growth of 56 per cent back to 44-45 per cent.2017财年营收增长了56%，但那包括东南亚电商集团Lazada，其数字从去年4月份起合并至阿里巴巴的业绩数字。武卫表示，剔除这一因素后，2017财年的增幅将从56%降至44%至45%。“[This] means by having such a big business, a larger business, we continue to accelerate revenue growth,” she said.她表示：“这意味着拥有如此大的业务，更大的业务，我们在继续加快营收增长。”The Securities and Exchange Commission last year launched an investigation into how Alibaba accounts for its Cainiao Network logistics business and into the massive, and previously unaudited, gross merchandise volume (GMV) numbers. That investigation focused on the GMV metric used for all items that are bought and sold on that group’s network.美国证券交易委员会(SEC)去年对阿里巴巴展开调查，目标是该公司对旗下物流业务菜鸟网络(Cainiao Network)的会计处理方式，以及此前未经审计的庞大的商品交易总额(GMV)数字。那项调查针对用来核算在该集团网络上买卖的所有商品的GMV计算方法。Alibaba no longer announces these figures on a quarterly basis, and Ms Wu did not discuss gross merchandise volume numbers in her presentation.阿里巴巴不再每季度公布这些数字，武卫在她的陈述中也没有讨论GMV。The company’s shares have been on a roll this year, along with tech stocks across China and the US, and are up 43 per cent so far this year at $125.64. With a market capitalisation of $317.8bn, it is among the top 10 largest companies globally by equity value.与中国和美国的其他科技股一样，该公司今年以来股价涨势迅猛，今年迄今已上涨43%，至125.64美元。市值达到3178亿美元，这意味着它是全球股本价值排名前10的公司之一。Growth this fiscal year will continue to be driven by the core retail business, including in newer areas such as physical supermarkets and international businesses. Last year that business generated adjusted margins of 59 per cent on the basis of earnings before interest, tax and amortisation.2018财年的增长将继续受核心零售业务的推动，包括实体超市和国际业务等较新领域。2017财年，这块业务在税息折旧及摊销前利润(EBITDA)基础上的调整后利润率达到59%。“We are willing to invest that money into expansion of the consumer business,” said Ms Wu. “And to make that very clear, we are going to invest that to gain B2C [business-to-consumer] market share.”“我们愿意将这些钱用于扩大消费者业务，”武卫表示。“明确地说，我们将投资以增加B2C（企业对消费者）市场份额。”While Alibaba has powered ahead on ecommerce, gobbling up Yahoo’s China operations and driving eBay out of China in the process, it is increasingly rubbing against its domestic peers — Baidu and Tencent, which make up the BAT trinity with Alibaba — in other areas.
尽管阿里巴巴在电子商务方面领先，在此过程中把雅虎(Yahoo)的中国业务收入囊中，并把eBay赶出中国，但它在其他一些领域与国内同行百度和腾讯的竞争日趋激烈。三家巨擘被统称为BAT。Tencent’s Weixinpay has been narrowing the gap in payments with Alipay, run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial. Alibaba-owned live-streaming site Youku Tudou has also lost some luxury advertisers to other platforms like Weibo, though Weibo is 31 per cent owned by Alibaba.腾讯的微信支付(Weixinpay)在支付方面不断缩小与支付宝(Alipay)之间的差距，后者是由阿里巴巴的关联公司蚂蚁金服(Ant Financial)运营的支付服务。阿里巴巴拥有的视频网站优酷土豆(Youku Tudou)也被微博(Weibo)等其他平台夺走了一些奢侈品广告客户，尽管阿里巴巴持有微博31%股份。