Alibaba is expected to IPO in September and a new financial report from the company reveals that the Chinese e-commerce giant continues to grow at a blistering pace. The company's growth pattern, and its recent entrance into the U.S. market, makes Alibaba a serious threat to e-commerce giants like Amazon and eBay.
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Alibaba is growing ~50% annually in volume terms.
The gross merchandise volume (GMV) - or, the value of all merchandise - sold on Alibaba's e-commerce sites reached $248 billion in 2013, 52% more than it sold in 2012.
GMV in the second quarter of 2014 was $82 billion, which is 45% more than the same quarter last year.
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Alibaba sells 4X as much stuff in dollar terms as eBay does, and it's growing much faster.
It's useful to compare Alibaba and eBay because they are both marketplace businesses - meaning they don't actually own the merchandise they sell. Rather, retailers, merchants, and consumers use their sites to sell directly to consumers.
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Alibaba owns two main e-commerce sites.
- Tmall, an Alibaba site where retailers sell directly to consumers, grew 81% year-over-year in the second quarter.
- Taobao, where consumers sell to other consumers, grew 33% year-over-year and still accounts for the majority of sales via Alibaba.
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Mobile commerce is driving an increasing share of Alibaba's business.
One in three dollars that flowed through Alibaba's e-commerce sites came from mobile shoppers last quarter, up from 12% one year earlier.
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For context, 30% of eBay's GMV comes from mobile.
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More than a quarter billion people bought something through Alibaba in the second quarter.
Alibaba's customer base is already far larger than eBay's, and it's growing much faster.
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Alibaba is still very dependent on Chinese shoppers.
Less than 1 in 10 revenue dollars from Alibaba's e-commerce sites come from customers outside China. However, with the recent launch of its U.S. site 11Main.com, that could soon change. For comparison, almost 40% of Amazon's revenues come from outside North America.
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Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.