Who will be the future king of e-commerce? Will Alibaba surpass Amazon one day?

• Amazon's sales are 4 times that of Alibaba (in 2022) $500B vs. $120B, and Alibaba's EBITDA is slightly less than 3 times that of Amazon ($54B vs. $21B)

• Amazon is in a phase of decelerating sales (+3% in 2022), while Alibaba is in a phase of declining sales (-6% in 2022)

• Amazon has 6 times as many employees as Alibaba (1,541,000 at the end of 2022 vs. 255,000 for Alibaba)

• Amazon is investing massively in building 21st century cloud and logistics infrastructure in more than 20 countries. By 2022, its capital expenditure investment will be 8 times higher than Alibaba ($64 billion vs. $8 billion)

• Amazon’s market cap is almost 6 times that of Alibaba ($140 trillion vs. $250 trillion)

Alibaba looks like a copy of Amazon, but there are differences:

Alibaba is essentially a marketplace business and operates under multiple apps and websites (Taobao Marketplace, Tmall, Taocaicai or Hema Fresh) with different brands and positioning. To serve marketplace sellers, Alibaba has developed a strong logistics arm called Cainiao Network, which accounts for 5% of Alibaba's sales.

🛒Amazon is a combination of retail and a very powerful logistics network.

🌐Alibaba is essentially a national enterprise. More than 92% of its sales come from China. Its international e-commerce sites (AliExpress, etc.) will have sales of approximately $9.6 billion in 2022 (7% of its sales).

🌎Amazon is a more international company, and 72% of Amazon's sales still come from the United States.

☁️ With sales of $11 billion in 2022, Alibaba Cloud is the world's fourth-largest cloud vendor (ahead of IBM) with a 4% market share. It lags behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) (32% market share and $80 billion in sales), Microsoft (23%), and Google (10%).

🎥Like Amazon, Alibaba is also involved in entertainment and media. It hasn't created its own #streaming platform (Amazon has PrimeTV), but Alibaba owns long-form video platform Youku, as well as Alibaba Pictures, a film and TV production company that the group acquired in 2014. The division accounts for 4% of group turnover.

Editor ✎Estella/

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