Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province Photo: cnsphoto

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced significant developments in its restructuring plans as it unveiled its financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ending on March 31. The company disclosed its intention to spin off its cloud computing division, explore an IPO for its delivery arm Cainiao, and execute the IPO process for its supermarket division Freshippo.
 
The news was released by Daniel Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and Toby Xu, the company's CFO, as shown by a filing it submitted to the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited.
 
"In an increasingly complex world, we have proactively transformed our organization to strengthen the competitiveness of our businesses through greater independence to address the evolving needs of different customers and capture new opportunities,” Daniel Zhang was quoted as saying.
 
Zhang revealed that the company's board of directors has approved a complete spin-off of the Cloud Intelligence Group through a stock dividend distribution to shareholders, with the intention of establishing it as an independent publicly listed company.

Liu Dingding, a veteran analyst in tech industry told the Global Times on Thursday that the move showed major Chinese internet platforms attach great importance to cloud services, noting that Alibaba's e-commerce platform, payment system and logistics system inseparable from the cloud.
 
"At present, mainstream technology internet companies in China have attached strategic importance to cloud services, and have not given up investing in cloud service products despite the increasing pressure on growth," Liu said.
 
Toby Xu also announced that the company has approved the process to start exploration of IPO for Cainiao Smart Logistics Group, as well as an execution of IPO for Freshippo.
 
Earlier this year, Alibaba unveiled plans to restructure into six units and anticipated that these units would eventually go public as independent entities.

Alibaba's financial data revealed a 2 percent increase in fourth-quarter revenue, which some overseas media reports deemed lower than expectations. However, the company's adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, which surged to approximately 32 billion yuan, surpassed forecasts from major foreign media outlets.
 
Liu said that Alibaba's growing revenues also offered another sign of China's economic rebound.
 
"I am full of confidence that the second quarter will see accelerated growth of China’s platform companies,” Liu said.
 
Global Times