Alibaba Health Reports FY2020 Results: Revenue Grows 88.3% Year-over-Year, Adjusted Net Profit Surges 114.8%

On the evening of May 27, AliHealth released its financial results announcement for fiscal year 2020, showing that the company’s revenue continued to maintain a trend of rapid growth last year, with a year-on-year increase of 88.3%. The adjusted net profit reached RMB 261 million (RMB, same below), representing a year-on-year increase of 114.8%.

“The continuous improvement in profitability has laid a solid foundation for the Group to increase its investment and strategic positioning in internet-based healthcare businesses, including prescription drugs, online healthcare, and smart healthcare,” stated the performance announcement.

The announcement revealed that, as of March 31, 2020, the annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) generated by the Tmall pharmaceutical e-commerce platform operated by AliHealth exceeded RMB 83.5 billion, with annual active consumers surpassing 190 million, an increase of 30 million from six months earlier. During the same period, the company’s self-operated pharmaceutical business maintained strong growth, with revenue increasing by 92.4% year-on-year. The number of annual active consumers for its online self-operated stores exceeded 48 million, representing an increase of 11 million from six months prior.

As revealed in the announcement, AliHealth has also achieved significant progress in the field of internet medical services. Since November 2018, AliHealth has exclusively established an independent healthcare channel on the Alipay client app and assumes full responsibility for managing healthcare industry partners within this channel. The announcement indicates that by the end of March 2020, Alipay had contracted with more than 15,000 medical institutions, including over 3,900 secondary and tertiary hospitals. Furthermore, medical insurance payment services have been enabled at nearly 400 tertiary hospitals across 17 provinces in China.

Notably, during the pandemic, AliHealth launched a series of convenient services, including public education on epidemic prevention and control, online consultations, and home delivery of medications, which significantly met residents’ health needs and drove explosive growth in the number of active users of AliHealth’s medical and healthcare services on Alipay. In the first quarter of 2020, the cumulative number of unique active users in Alipay’s medical and healthcare channel exceeded 390 million.

“Facing the epidemic, AliHealth has an unshirkable responsibility,” said Zhu Shunyan, Chairman and CEO of AliHealth, in the “Chairman’s Statement” included in the annual report released on the 27th. He pointed out that, leveraging its years of in-depth development and strategic layout in areas such as pharmaceutical and health product sales, internet healthcare, and digital healthcare, AliHealth has fully committed its accumulated capabilities, technologies, and resources to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zhu Shunyan stated that, while ensuring the allocation and focus of resources for pandemic response, AliHealth proactively suspended marketing and promotional activities for non-pandemic-related categories, including adult family planning products, contact lenses, and non-pandemic medical devices. This decision had a negative impact on the platform’s GMV growth rate to some extent.

“Our efforts have also been recognized and positively received by users, with a significant increase in the number of active consumers for the Group since early 2020,” said Zhu Shunyan.

Notably, the pandemic has accelerated the recognition and acceptance of “Internet + Healthcare” across all sectors of society. At the national level, a series of favorable policies have been successively introduced, propelling the “Internet + Healthcare” industry into a fast-track development phase.