Alibaba's Overseas Growth Push Gets Critical To Beat Domestic Slowdown

Alibaba Group Holding Limited's BABA hunt for overseas growth is critical to offset sluggish demand at home by expanding in Europe through its Southeast Asian offshoot, Lazada, Reuters reports.
Lazada plans to target local European vendors, while Alibaba's existing global platform, AliExpress, will continue to focus mainly on cross-border sales from China.
However, the Chinese e-commerce giant may struggle to justify the investment with a less than 5% European market share and hard-core rivals like Amazon.com Inc AMZN.
Despite taking control of Singapore-based Lazada in 2016, alongside global tie-ups, domestic commerce revenue still made up 67% of its total sales in the six months ended in September, versus 7% from abroad, according to Reuters.
In 2021, AliExpress had just a 4% market share in Western Europe, far behind Amazon's 20%. In Eastern Europe, its 5% share also trails Russia's Wildberries and Poland's Allegro.
Revenue growth at Lazada in Southeast Asia slowed from a triple-digit pace a year earlier to 52% in the December quarter, as rivals like the Sea Limited SE-owned Shopee win market share.
Analysts see Alibaba reporting revenue of just 199 billion yuan ($29.8 billion) in the quarter to March, a record low 6% increase from a year earlier.
The Covid-19 lockdowns in Shanghai and other major cities have hit consumer spending. The total transactions on Alibaba's Tmall retail site in April fell 13% year-on-year.
Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 0.10% at $82.39 on Wednesday.

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