A person walks towards a building of Alibaba Ant Group in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province in April 2018. Souce:IC

Alibaba's revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2021, which ended on December 31, 2020, stood at 221.1 billion yuan ($33.9 billion), up 37 percent year-on-year, the company said in its financial report on Tuesday.

As of December 2020, Alibaba had 902 million mobile monthly active users in China retail marketplaces. Annual active consumers stood at 779 million for the whole year.

Analysts said that the quarter as a whole was good for Alibaba, which should be attributed to China's strong consumption power and pent-up demand from the first half.

"Thanks to the rapid recovery of China's economy, Alibaba had another very healthy quarter," said Daniel Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group. 

For instance, from November 1 to 11, Tmall's online global shopping spree had transactions of 498.2 billion yuan, up 26 percent from last year and the highest rate of growth in the past three years.

"E-commerce platforms ... saw surges in transactions during shopping festivals in November and December. Alibaba's e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Tmall made a big contribution to the results," Wang Peng, an assistant professor at the Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times. 

"Ant Group provides financial services to Alibaba and is an important part of its entire industry chain. China's increased regulation of fintech and its determination to break monopolies may have an impact on Alibaba's day-to-day operations, and also in the financing of the whole group," said Wang. 

Alibaba said in its results that it had received a notice of investigation from the Chinese market regulator on December 24, 2020 that it had commenced an investigation pursuant to the anti-monopoly law.

"The investigation is ongoing and we are fully cooperating with the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). We have established a special taskforce … to conduct internal reviews. We will continue to actively communicate with the SAMR on compliance with regulatory requirements. We will further update the market when the investigation is concluded," read the report.

Ant Group announced in early November the suspension of its proposed dual listings and IPOs on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. 

"Due to recent significant changes in the fintech regulatory environment in China, Ant Group is in the process of developing its rectification plan, which will need to go through the relevant regulatory procedures. Therefore, Ant Group's business prospects and IPO plans are subject to substantial uncertainties. Currently, we are unable to make a complete and fair assessment of the impact that these changes and uncertainties will have on Alibaba Group," read the financial report.

The group's focus on various businesses is likely to be adjusted accordingly. Alibaba's business development, including cloud computing, digital technology and other fields, may become the key development sectors, while finance and online-to-offline may be contained to some extent, Wang noted.

Analysts also said that Alibaba needs to embrace regulation, actively respond to changes, and make internal adjustments. 

Global Times