Alibaba Singles' Day sales hit $9.34B
Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, said he hopes to fully bring the Singles' Day shopping holiday to global consumers by 2019. This comes after the online shopping event topped $9 billion in sales, smashing previous records.
Speaking with CNBC's David Faber on Tuesday from Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China, Ma discussed the company's fortunes since its historic IPO, and revealed that he does not care to watch his stock price.
"I even don't dare to watch our stock price, because this is what other people think who you are," Ma said, "I dare not watch it, I think let the market take care of themselves, we should take care of the business."
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Tuesday may well be a good day to avoid watching the stock: By 11 a.m. ET, Alibaba was suffering one of its worst days ever at a decline of more than 3.7 percent.
Ma also said that he wants to take Alipay—Alibaba's online financial services platform—public in the near future. Although there is not a specific date, Ma said he expects this offering to come sooner than later. Ma had indicated in an earlier interview with Chinese media that the company would likely go public in China, but he stressed to CNBC that he had not ruled out an offering in a Western country.
Instead of the added capital that an offering would raise, Ma emphasized that the plans to take Alipay public are an effort to boost public faith in the system through the added transparency inherent in a public company.
"As a company we have to be very transparent," he said. "We are in a business very related to finance, and I want this company to last long, and I want this company to be audited by everyone."
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This news comes as Alipay posted massive numbers during Singles' Day: At its peak volume, the system processed 2.85 million payment transactions per minute, the company said.
Ma also suggested that Alipay could one day partner with Apple for a payments system. He indicated that "we've had great discussions, and I think both are interested." The two firms' partnership could even extend to hardware sales and cloud computing, he suggested.
As for Alibaba's relationship with Yahoo—which still owns about 16 percent of Ma's company—he suggested that the two companies are largely leaving each other alone. Still, Ma said, the American firm is probably pleased with Alibaba's results.
"I think they're happy, do you think they're happy?" Ma asked.
Other partnerships could come from the West's media sector, he suggested.
In terms of other plans for the future, Ma said he hopes to leverage big data to solve social problems like pollution. These plans will, of course, require government partnerships, he added.
"If China's government is so sort of conservative, too backward, too censorship, how can China have 600 million internet users," he said. "Sit down, talk with them, listen to them, communicate with them, they will join you."
And despite some shareholders' gripes about dedicating corporate funds to helping the world, Ma said there is also an economic incentive.
"Even if you can not solve the problem absolutely 100 percent, if you can do even 20-3 percent you can make tons of money," he said.
As Alibaba concludes its most successful sales holiday ever, the Chinese billionaire has much to be excited about: In the first hour of Single's Day alone, Alibaba's e-commerce network sold over $2 billion worth of products.
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Singles' Day—so named because the date Nov. 11 has four singles (11/11)—is China's equivalent of Cyber Monday, and it boasts massive sales figures. Spurred by Alibaba and its network of online retailers, the day has grown from $7 million in sales in 2009 to over $5.8 billion last year for Ma's company.
Less than 21 hours into the event, Alibaba had already broken above $8 billion in sales:
Analysts had predicted this year's Singles' Day would smash records because of growing mobile-platform buying and Alibaba's push to bring the sales holiday to global consumers.
But Alibaba is more than just the annual sales holiday it pioneered: The company has posted $279 billion in sales over the last year on 307 million annual active buyers (the U.S. has a population of 316 million, for comparison).
Alibaba's $25 billion IPO set the record for the biggest in history when the company went public in September. Since then, the stock price has risen more than 25 percent, to over $119.
—CNBC's Jaime Sasso contributed to this report.