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HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) -
Top Chinese e-commerce firm
Alibaba Ltd said on Tuesday its full-year 2007 profit grew
340 percent, boosted by a buoyant Chinese economy, increasing
Internet access in the country and healthy growth in the firm's
number of paying members.
Alibaba, an online business-to-business site connecting
companies looking to import and export Chinese goods, was
founded in 1999 as a bulletin board for businesses to post
trade leads.
Last year, Alibaba had a 57.3 percent share of China's 3.9
billion yuan business-to-business market, according to local
data firm iResearch.
Alibaba's shares lost more than one-fifth of their value on
Tuesday before the results were announced, following a sell-off
of Nasdaq-listed Chinese Internet companies overnight.
Alibaba, in which U.S. Internet company Yahoo is a key
investor, reported profit of 967.8 million yuan ($136.7
million) for the year to the end of 2007, compared with 219.93
million yuan a year earlier.
The result beat Goldman Sachs' forecast of 947 million yuan
and Cazenove's estimate of 889 million yuan.
(For a full earnings statement, please click on:
http://www.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/20080318/LTN2008
0318153.pdf).
Alibaba's stock had fallen by more than 44 percent this
year through Monday, compared with a 24 percent fall in the
benchmark Hang Seng Index.
Its shares closed down 21 percent on Tuesday at HK$12.20,
below its initial public offering price of HK$13.50 last
November.
Alibaba's registered users grew 40 percent to 27.6 million
in 2007 and total paying members rose 39 percent to more than
305,000.
Revenue grew 59 percent to 2.16 billion yuan in 2007,
compared with 1.36 billion yuan the previous year, mainly due
to an increase in paying members and average spending per
paying member.
($1 = HK$7.8)
(Reporting by Vinicy Chan and Sophie Taylor; Editing by
Edmund Klamann)
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