Can Alibaba Sustain Revenue Growth Above 50%?

The company’s executive vice chairman said on CNBC Tuesday morning that Alibaba is not like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN):

Amazon’s margin is hampered by the fact that they take on inventory and they have a large costs of goods sold item, so their gross margin starts [at] a very, very low margin. Somewhere in the low teens. And in our case, we operate in a marketplace model, where the revenue we generate, coming from commissions and also online marketing services, have inherently very high margins.

Alibaba’s other big difference is that it claims only about a third of China’s adult population as active annual users. That leaves enormous potential for growth in its home country alone before it even tries to attack foreign markets.

Greater than 50% revenue growth demanded an equally large boost to Alibaba’s annual active buyers total, from 202 million a year ago to 307 million this year. Just compounding 50% growth means that Alibaba will have to sign up all the adults in China in another three years. How likely is that?

And even if it somehow manages to do that, how long can it expect revenues to grow at a rate of 50%. It may have high margins now, but there are other big competitors in China that could rev up some headwinds for the company. Even without competition, keeping revenue growth at 50% a year will be a challenge.

It is too early to declare the stock overvalued and issue a warning to investors. Alibaba clearly has a lot of room to run and will run like crazy for some time to come. But like all things that cannot last, this won’t either.

After a slow start Tuesday morning, Alibaba shares traded up nearly 2.5% at $104.23, after posting a new post-IPO high of $104.96. The post-IPO low is $82.81.

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