阿里巴巴利潤(rùn)下滑，線下擴(kuò)張令投資者不安

SHENZHEN, China — Alibaba, the online shopping giant, is increasingly going offline. That is making some investors nervous.

中國(guó)深圳——線上購(gòu)物巨頭阿里巴巴(Alibaba)越來(lái)越走向線下。這讓一些投資者感到不安。

The Chinese company on Friday reported a fall in profit of nearly 30 percent in the latest quarter, the first such decline in a year and a half. One reason: Alibaba got a bump in profit last year from selling its shares in a social media app. Another culprit, however, was heavy spending on Alibaba’s businesses outside of e-commerce, including cloud computing and brick-and-mortar retail — which the company, counterintuitively, likes to call “new retail.”

這家中國(guó)公司周五宣布最近一個(gè)季度利潤(rùn)下降近30%，這是它一年半以來(lái)利潤(rùn)首次下滑。其中一個(gè)原因是，阿里巴巴去年賣(mài)出一款社交媒體應(yīng)用的股份，利潤(rùn)激增。但另一個(gè)根本原因是，阿里巴巴在電子商務(wù)之外的業(yè)務(wù)領(lǐng)域支出巨大，包括云計(jì)算和實(shí)體零售。阿里巴巴有違直覺(jué)地喜歡把后者叫做“新零售”。

Those ventures are part of Alibaba’s plan to broaden its empire and become more of a full-service technology company akin to Google. But some investors appear to be fretting about the cost of such expansion to the company’s profits. Alibaba has already lost around $60 billion in market value since its shares peaked in January.

這些業(yè)務(wù)是阿里巴巴擴(kuò)大商業(yè)帝國(guó)，變得更像一家類似于谷歌(Google)的全服務(wù)科技公司計(jì)劃的一部分。但一些投資者似乎擔(dān)心這種擴(kuò)張對(duì)公司利潤(rùn)的影響。自1月股價(jià)達(dá)到最高點(diǎn)以來(lái)，阿里巴巴的市值已蒸發(fā)大約600億美元(約合3800億元人民幣)。

They remain well above their level a year ago, however, thanks to strength in Alibaba’s core online business. In the first three months of the year, total revenue increased by more than 60 percent over the same period last year, the company said Friday. It added that it expects a similar pace of sales growth for the coming financial year.

然而，多虧了核心的線上業(yè)務(wù)實(shí)力雄厚，阿里巴巴的表現(xiàn)仍遠(yuǎn)超一年前的水平。該公司周五表示，今年前三個(gè)月總收入同比增加逾60%。阿里巴巴還補(bǔ)充說(shuō)，預(yù)計(jì)下一財(cái)年的銷售增長(zhǎng)會(huì)保持相似的水平。

For what has become one of the biggest internet companies on the planet, figuring out how to get even bigger was never going to be straightforward. Or cheap.

對(duì)于已是全球最大互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司之一的阿里巴巴來(lái)說(shuō)，搞清楚怎么進(jìn)一步擴(kuò)大規(guī)模從來(lái)都不是一件簡(jiǎn)單的事情。也不是一件低成本的事。

In March, Alibaba poured an additional $2 billion into its Southeast Asian online emporium, Lazada, which is duking it out with Amazon in the region. Back at home in China, the company is investing heavily in its entertainment and cloud services businesses, both of which lose money. And it is rapidly expanding its footprint in physical retail, to collect more different kinds of data about customers’ habits and desires.

3月，阿里巴巴再次向其在東南亞的線上商城拉扎達(dá)(Lazada)注入20億美元。拉扎達(dá)正在該地區(qū)同亞馬遜(Amazon)競(jìng)爭(zhēng)。在中國(guó)國(guó)內(nèi)，阿里巴巴正在大舉投資娛樂(lè)和云服務(wù)業(yè)務(wù)，這兩個(gè)領(lǐng)域目前都處于虧損狀態(tài)。此外，阿里巴巴還在迅速擴(kuò)大其在實(shí)體零售領(lǐng)域的印跡，以便收集更多不同類型的消費(fèi)者習(xí)慣和意愿相關(guān)數(shù)據(jù)。

But compared with being an online middleman, running stores in the real world is costly and complex. Hema, the company’s chain of high-tech supermarkets, now has dozens of stores across China, a large chunk of which opened in the first four months of this year alone.

但和充當(dāng)線上中間商相比，在現(xiàn)實(shí)世界中開(kāi)店代價(jià)高昂，情況復(fù)雜。該公司的高科技連鎖超市盒馬目前在中國(guó)各地有幾十家門(mén)店，其中很大一部分是在今年前4個(gè)月開(kāi)張的。

Modest minimarts these are not. A typical store might feature tanks of live lobsters and crabs, a bar with beer on tap and a grill where steaks are cooked to order. Bags of groceries zip on conveyors above shoppers’ heads on their way to being delivered to nearby homes.

它們不是簡(jiǎn)陋的便利店。典型的盒馬門(mén)店里可能會(huì)有成箱的活龍蝦和螃蟹、一個(gè)提供桶裝啤酒的酒吧和一個(gè)現(xiàn)點(diǎn)現(xiàn)做牛排的燒烤店。袋裝的食品雜貨在消費(fèi)者頭頂?shù)膫魉蛶线\(yùn)輸，再送往附近的消費(fèi)者家中。

Fresh food aside, Alibaba has also invested in an electronics retailer, a home-improvement chain and a department store operator. Recently, it opened a mall in its home city, Hangzhou. It took control last year of its logistics affiliate, Cainiao, and in April it swallowed up a food-delivery service, Ele.me.

除新鮮食品外，阿里巴巴還投資了一家電子產(chǎn)品零售商、一個(gè)家居裝飾連鎖和一家百貨商店運(yùn)營(yíng)商。最近，該公司在其大本營(yíng)所在的城市杭州開(kāi)了一家購(gòu)物中心。阿里巴巴去年取得了對(duì)其物流子公司菜鳥(niǎo)的控制權(quán)，并在4月收購(gòu)了送餐服務(wù)公司餓了么。

All of these could someday help turn Alibaba into the vast digital enabler of on- and offline commerce that it wishes to be. But for now, they are new and unfamiliar activities for a company that prides itself on not owning much in the way of merchandise, warehouses, delivery trucks or other physical assets.

也許有一天，所有這些會(huì)幫助阿里巴巴如愿以償，成為一個(gè)龐大的線上和線下商業(yè)平臺(tái)。但目前，對(duì)一家以沒(méi)有太多商品、倉(cāng)庫(kù)、送貨卡車(chē)或其他有形資產(chǎn)而自豪的公司來(lái)說(shuō)，這些都是它不熟悉的新領(lǐng)域。

It does not help that the company’s archrival in China, the internet conglomerate Tencent, is also storming into many of these same businesses, including traditional retail.

而且阿里巴巴在中國(guó)的勁敵、互聯(lián)網(wǎng)企業(yè)集團(tuán)騰訊也在大舉進(jìn)軍很多相同的業(yè)務(wù)領(lǐng)域，包括傳統(tǒng)零售。

“I like Hema,” said Tian X. Hou, founder of T.H. Data Capital, a research firm in Beijing. “But Alibaba management is going to have to do a lot of thinking, and go through a lot of trial and error.”

“我喜歡盒馬，”北京研究公司天灝資本的創(chuàng)始人侯曉天說(shuō)。“但阿里巴巴管理層必須要多動(dòng)腦筋，要經(jīng)歷大量的試錯(cuò)。”

Despite investors’ worries, Ms. Hou said, Alibaba executives are at least sounding more resolute about their commitment to this new, offline future for the company.

侯曉天說(shuō)，盡管投資者感到擔(dān)憂，但阿里巴巴的高管至少聽(tīng)上去對(duì)致力于公司新的線下未來(lái)決心很大。

“They are fully communicating with the Street: ‘We’re doing it. And we actually do not care what you think, because we think it’s great, and it is the way to reach offline customers. It’s the way to sell in product categories that are not sold online. It is the way for us to expand.’”

“他們正在與華爾街充分溝通：我們正在這么做。我們其實(shí)并不在乎你們?cè)趺聪耄驗(yàn)槲覀冋J(rèn)為它很好，是獲取線下客戶的途徑，是銷售不在線上銷售的產(chǎn)品品類的方式，是我們擴(kuò)張的方式。”