Alibaba Smashes All Previous Singles’ Day Sales

Written by Mani

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) has broken its own previous records by logging over $9 billion in the first 12 hours of China’s Singles’ Day sales.

The Chinese e-commerce giant has matched the 2014 Singles’ Day figure of $9.3 billion just after midday Wednesday.

Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales hit new high year after year

The Chinese e-commerce giant, which six years ago turned November 11 into China’s equivalent of U.S. shopping event Cyber Monday, said today that its 2015 sales have eclipsed last year’s final results in a little over half the time.

According to research firm IDC, this year’s sales could rise to as much as $13.8 billion, a growth of almost 50% from last year’s total.

As outlined by ValueWalk, Alibaba smashed all the previous sales records for its Singles’ Day shopping event by logging $9.34 billion during the 24-hour period last year, while analysts were anticipating orders worth $8.1 billion. This was way above the previous year’s figure of $5.8 billion.

Earlier, Alibaba was indicating that this year’s Singles’ Day shopping event would set a new record. The e-commerce giant expected its partners to deploy 1.7 million deliverymen, 400,000 vehicles, 5,000 warehouses, and over 200 airplanes to handle the deliveries following the Singles’ Day event.

Alibaba said this year there would be over 40,000 merchants, and 30,000 brands from 25 countries selling goods on its platforms. Over 130 million users have already visited its marketplace app, Taobao, which exceeds the peak from last year.

Alibaba chief executive Daniel Zhang exuded confidence that this year’s event would mean “the whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption”. He promised consumers “a new surprise every hour” over the 24-hour marathon, especially mobile users. The firm said over 27 million purchases came via mobile devices in the first hour.

Record sales despite China’s slowing growth

Singles’ Day, named for the numerologically auspicious double 11 date, was originally a mock celebration for people not in relationships, and features steep discounts and other promotions aimed at attracting droves of customers online. Alibaba’s sales data have been closely watched as a gauge of Chinese consumption as economic growth slows.

Alibaba’s stock dropped 40% from November 2014 to September 2015 and slipped below its IPO price of $68. Slowing growth in revenues and gross merchandise value — which has slipped from more than 50% year-on-year in 2014 to roughly 30% in recent quarters — has fed the perception that the company’s best days may be behind it.

Amidst China’s economic expansion slowing down, this year’s Singles’ Day event has received a vocal support from the government. Chinese premier Li Keqiang’s office phoned Alibaba chairman Jack Ma hours before the promotion began, “congratulating and encouraging the creation and achievement of the 11.11 event”, said a posting on a social media account of Tmall, the group’s business-to-consumer arm.

Interestingly, JD.com Inc (JD.O), China’s second largest e-commerce firm and Alibaba’s chief rival, also said it broke past last year’s full-day total just before noon China time (0400 GMT). JD.com does not give specific sales figures for the day.

Following this year’s event, economists will be looking for clues about Chinese domestic consumption in Wednesday’s sales as the world’s second-biggest economy head for theslowest growth in nearly a quarter of a century.