Rhea Liu and Mochou Lee
Twitter’s stock price tumbled 12.8% on Tuesday after its forecasted revenue fell short of analysts’ expectations.
As Twitter lets investors down, some other companies indicated positive financial results in the third quarter, among which are Apple, and China’s Alibaba and Sohu. Notably, Apple showed a 99% increase in sales in the Greater China region. Alibaba’s stock price increased 8% on Tuesday as a result of its good performance during the September quarter.
AllChinaTech highlights some of the most significant points in these companies’ financial reports.
Alibaba
Alibaba released its second financial quarter report on Tuesday night. According to the report, Alibaba achieved RMB 22.2 billion (USD 3.5 million) in revenue by the end of the third quarter this year, a 32% increase compared with the same period last year.
As of September 30th, Alibaba achieved a 28% year-on-year increase in its gross merchandise volume (GMV) up to RMB 713 billion (USD 112 billion) on its China retail marketplaces. Alibaba’s mobile GMV alone, totalling RMB 10.52 billion (USD 1.655 million), accounts for 62% of its GMV, a 183% year-on-year increase.
Tmall, Alibaba’s B2C platform, increased its GMV by 73% since last quarter. “Tmall has an advantage in branding and service, which leads to the higher speed of increase in Tmall’s revenue,” said Maggie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, over a conference call with analysts.
Meanwhile, Alibaba’s cloud computing business received a 128% year-on-year boost to reach RMB 649 million (USD 102 million). Aliyun already has over 1.5 million users, according to Wu. Jack Ma deemed cloud computing and internet infrastructure Alibaba’s main focus for the next couple of years after its less satisfactory financial report came out last quarter.
Sohu
Sohu’s 2015 third quarter report shows the company achieved USD 522 million in revenue, up 21% year-on-year. In comparison, in the second quarter of 2015, the company saw an operating profit of USD 18 million, while in the third quarter of 2014, the company operated on a loss of USD 41 million.
Online advertising revenue remained the company’s primary source of income, with 21% year-on-year growth reaching USD 299 million, which accounts for 57% of its total revenue. Its non-ad revenue increased 22% to reach USD 222 million, accounting for 43% of the whole.
In contrast, there was a 12% decline in Sohu’s online games revenue compared with that in the second quarter, dropping to USD 153 million.
Sohu’s self-produced film Jianbin Man released in July became a box-office hit and brought Sohu USD 29 million in revenue. Sohu‘s CEO Zhang Chaoyang said the company may still produce one or two movies next year to boost income.
Apple
Apple Company‘s latest quarterly revenue was USD 51.5 billion. Compared to its revenue of USD 42.1 billion a year ago, Apple saw a year-on-year increase of 22%. Its revenue in the Greater China region soared to 12.5 billion, an amazing 99% increase from the same quarter last year.
Among all the Apple products, the iPhone contributed most, with a total shipment of 48.05 million and a USD 32.2 billion income, accounting for 63% of its total revenue. The total shipment of iPhone 6s exceeded 10 million just three days after its release in China.
The growth was also fueled by Mac, iPad and Apple Watch sales. Mac’s latest quarterly shipment reached 5.71 million, while 9.88 million iPads were shipped.
“We are heading into the holidays with our strongest product lineup yet, including iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch with an expanded lineup of cases and bands, the new iPad Pro and the all-new Apple TV which begins shipping this week,” said Cook.
Apple also set a target to make USD 75.5 billion to USD 77.5 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2016.
Twitter announced an expected revenue of USD 695 million to USD 710 million in a statement released on Tuesday, falling short of the USD 741.6 million average projected by analysts, according to Bloomberg.
The revenue of Twitter as released in its third quarter report is USD 569 million with a 58% year-over-year increase, which is scarcely higher than its previous forecast of USD 545 million to USD 560 million. It still faces a USD 132 million net loss, though this is 25% less than the USD 175.5 million net loss in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, in its third quarter financial release, Twitter indicated weak user growth of 11% to 320 million, 4% short of the 15% forecasted in the prior period. Users in the U.S. remained at 66 million, with the situation described as a “lack of meaningful user growth” by Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Paul Sweeney.
Its newly-assigned CEO/founder Jack Dorsey has made big moves to revamp the company. Last week, he gave out ⅓ of his own shares of the company to the staff pool as an incentive for current employees and future recruits.
However, Dorsey failed to give a satisfactory answer about the company’s future product plan on the conference call after the release, another piece of concerning news for investors.
(Mochou Lee is a guest writer at AllChinaTech)
