It is understood that the Ministry of Commerce, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the National Development and Reform Commission recently jointly issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for E-Commerce Development". According to statistics, the total value of cross-border e-commerce retail imports and exports reached 1.69 trillion yuan in 2020. At the same time, it was proposed that by 2025, the cross-border e-commerce transaction volume will achieve a development goal of 2.5 trillion yuan.
The 14th Five-Year Plan points out that in response to the increasing barriers for cross-border e-commerce to enter overseas markets, the country will continue to strengthen policy support. It can be seen that the country currently has high hopes for the role of cross-border e-commerce in the e-commerce field, which may also bring more development opportunities for sellers. There have been a lot of big news recently. In addition to the country launching relevant important plans, many cross-border sellers have also disclosed their third-quarter results one after another. Recently, e-commerce giant Amazon also released its Q3 report card. Judging from the results, it seems to have continued the sluggish state of the second quarter. Amazon's Q3 profits were halved and it faces billions in shipping costs! Amazon officially released its third quarter financial report. During the reporting period, Amazon's GMV reached $110.81 billion, up 15% from the same period last year, but fell short of the market expectation of $111.6 billion; its net profit was $3.16 billion, down 50% from $6.3 billion in the same period last year, and lower than Wall Street's forecast of $4.6 billion. The financial report shows that Amazon's revenue from third-party seller services (including marketplace commissions and shipping costs) increased 18% to US$24.25 billion, but was lower than the 34% increase in the second quarter and the 60% increase in the first quarter. It is learned that Amazon did not suffer losses when its sales and net profit did not meet market expectations, mainly due to the huge profits of AWS and the strong performance of its advertising business. AWS sales were US$16.11 billion, generating US$4.88 billion in profits, and advertising revenue was US$925 million. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Amazon's performance situation is still not optimistic. The financial report predicts that Amazon's net sales in the fourth quarter will be between 130 billion and 140 billion US dollars, and operating income is expected to be between 0 and 3 billion US dollars, which is lower than market expectations, and profits are likely to fall to the lowest level in history. Amazon CEO Andy said that under the impact of factors such as labor shortages, increased transportation costs and supply chain problems, billions of dollars in additional costs are expected in the fourth quarter. Previously, in the second quarter report, Amazon warned that slowing sales growth and high wages and warehousing expenses would continue until the end of this year. Based on long-term profit optimization considerations, Amazon has to increase its budget investment to increase transportation capacity to balance the contradiction between peak shopping demand during the peak season and global supply chain and labor shortages. However, the huge expenditure will cause profits to drop to a freezing point in the short term. It can be seen that the boosting effect of the epidemic on online consumption is gradually diminishing. With the intensification of the global supply chain crisis and the continuous increase in freight costs, not only the top cross-border sellers and small and medium-sized sellers, but also many retail platform giants have seen their profits shrink to varying degrees. Net profit soared 501%, Shopify's remarkable results made Amazon "envious"! Compared with Amazon's grim performance development situation, Shopify, which has been gaining momentum recently, has delivered a more impressive answer. On October 28, Shopify released its financial report for the third quarter of 2021. The financial report shows that Shopify's total revenue in Q3 was as high as US$1.124 billion, an increase of 46.5% from US$767 million in the same period last year; net profit was US$1.148 billion, a surge of 501% from US$191 million in the same period last year. The financial report data clearly shows that Shopify's various businesses advanced in parallel in the third quarter and maintained a good development trend. Among them, the subscription solution revenue was US$336 million, a year-on-year increase of 37.1%; the business solution revenue was US$788 million, a year-on-year increase of 51%. Since 2021, Shopify has continued to expand its business layout. On the one hand, it has strengthened platform construction, launched "Shopify Markets", improved and upgraded the functions of platform operations and management tools, and on the other hand, deepened cooperation with other platforms, jointly launched "TikTok Shopping" with TikTok, and expanded channel layout. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Shopify's performance prospects remain bright. Shopify expects that future revenue will continue to maintain high growth momentum and GMV growth will continue to increase. It is expected that revenue in the fourth quarter will account for the largest share of annual revenue, but the growth rate will be lower than in 2020. Shopify's outstanding performance also proves that in the current turbulent cross-border market, independent sites led by Shopify are impacting Amazon's monopoly and are rapidly expanding at a rate of one spark. Nowadays, cross-border sellers are entering a new era, and the multi-channel operation model has become the main theme of the current environment. Driven by this, entering the independent station is undoubtedly an ideal choice for sellers to expand channels. Of course, although the independent station is popular, its business model is also challenging, and sellers still need to carefully evaluate it.
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