阿里巴巴利潤下滑,線下擴張令投資者不安

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

中國深圳——線上購物巨頭阿里巴巴(Alibaba)越來越走向線下。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.”

這家中國公司週五宣佈最近一個季度利潤下降近30%，這是它一年半以來利潤首次下滑。其中一個原因是，阿里巴巴去年賣出一款社交媒體應用的股份，利潤激增。但另一個根本原因是，阿里巴巴在電子商務之外的業務領域支出巨大，包括雲計算和實體零售。阿里巴巴有違直覺地喜歡把後者叫做“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.

這些業務是阿里巴巴擴大商業帝國，變得更像一家類似於谷歌(Google)的全服務科技公司計劃的一部分。但一些投資者似乎擔心這種擴張對公司利潤的影響。自1月股價達到最高點以來，阿里巴巴的市值已蒸發大約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務實力雄厚，阿里巴巴的表現仍遠超一年前的水平。該公司週五表示，今年前三個月總收入同比增加逾60%。阿里巴巴還補充說，預計下一財年的銷售增長會保持相似的水平。

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.

對於已是全球最大互聯網公司之一的阿里巴巴來說，搞清楚怎麼進一步擴大規模從來都不是一件簡單的事情。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(Lazada)注入20億美元。拉扎達正在該地區同亞馬遜(Amazon)競爭。在中國國內，阿里巴巴正在大舉投資娛樂和雲服務業務，這兩個領域目前都處於虧損狀態。此外，阿里巴巴還在迅速擴大其在實體零售領域的印跡，以便收集更多不同類型的消費者習慣和意願相關數據。

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.

但和充當線上中間商相比，在現實世界中開店代價高昂，情況複雜。該公司的高科技連鎖超市盒馬目前在中國各地有幾十家門店，其中很大一部分是在今年前4個月開張的。

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.

它們不是簡陋的便利店。典型的盒馬門店裏可能會有成箱的活龍蝦和螃蟹、一個提供桶裝啤酒的酒吧和一個現點現做牛排的燒烤店。袋裝的食品雜貨在消費者頭頂的傳送帶上運輸，再送往附近的消費者家中。

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, .

除新鮮食品外，阿里巴巴還投資了一家電子產品零售商、一個家居裝飾連鎖和一家百貨商店運營商。最近，該公司在其大本營所在的城市杭州開了一家購物中心。阿里巴巴去年取得了對其物流子公司菜鳥的控制權，並在4月收購了送餐服務公司餓了麼。

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，所有這些會幫助阿里巴巴如願以償，成爲一個龐大的線上和線下商業平臺。但目前，對一家以沒有太多商品、倉庫、送貨卡車或其他有形資產而自豪的公司來說，這些都是它不熟悉的新領域。

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的勁敵、互聯網企業集團騰訊也在大舉進軍很多相同的業務領域，包括傳統零售。

“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始人侯曉天說。“但阿里巴巴管理層必須要多動腦筋，要經歷大量的試錯。”

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，儘管投資者感到擔憂，但阿里巴巴的高管至少聽上去對致力於公司新的線下未來決心很大。

“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：我們正在這麼做。我們其實並不在乎你們怎麼想，因爲我們認爲它很好，是獲取線下客戶的途徑，是銷售不在線上銷售的產品品類的方式，是我們擴張的方式。”