阿里巴巴二季度财报强劲，销售额同比增长60%

BEIJING — The escalating trade fight between China and the United States is making this an uneasy time for the world’s second-largest economy. Chinese stocks have slumped. The currency has gone for a ride.

北京——中国和美国之间不断升级的贸易战令世界第二大经济体感到不安。中国股市大跌。货币贬值。

Serving the nation’s middle-class shoppers, however, still seems to be rollicking good business.

然而，为该国的中产阶级购物者提供服务，似乎仍然是好买卖。

The Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce leviathan, reported a rise in sales of more than 60 percent in the latest quarter compared with a year earlier.

中国电子商务巨头阿里巴巴集团报告称，它新一季度的销售额同比增长了60%以上。

Profits for April to June fell by more than 40 percent, however, reflecting the effect of a large increase in the valuation of Ant Financial, an Alibaba sister company. Because Alibaba has given some employees awards based on Ant shares, the group’s compensation expenses grew sizably.

然而，4月至6月，公司利润下降超过40%，反映了阿里巴巴的姊妹公司蚂蚁金服的估值大幅上升的影响。由于阿里巴巴根据蚂蚁金服的股份给予一些员工奖励，因此该集团薪酬支出大幅增长。

Had that not been the case, the company said, profits would have grown by more than a third.

该公司表示，如果不考虑这个因素，公司利润将增长逾三分之一。

Alibaba is already among the world’s largest and most influential forces in digital retail. But it is setting its sights on providing technology to enable all commerce, whether online or off, along with logistics and marketing. Thursday’s strong results suggest that the company’s empire building has not harmed the current core of its business: selling ads to the merchants on its shopping platforms.

阿里巴巴已成为全球数字零售业内最大、最具影响力的公司之一。但它的目标是向线上和线下各种商业活动提供技术，以及物流和营销。周四的强劲业绩表明，该公司的帝国建设并未损害其业务当前的核心：在其购物平台上向商家销售广告。

“This model is kind of unique,” said Jialong Shi, an analyst in Hong Kong with the investment bank Nomura. “If the macro slowdown is to take a toll on the overall retail business, Alibaba should, on the back of this unique marketplace model, fare relatively better.”

“这种模式在某种程度上是独一无二的，”投行野村证券在香港的分析师史家龙表示。 “如果宏观经济放缓对整体零售业务造成影响，阿里巴巴在这种独特的市场模式支持下，发展应该相对较好。”

Many Chinese internet companies have been in choppy waters recently. Last week, shares of Tencent Holdings, the colossus of social media, messaging and payments, tumbled after the company reported a rare drop in profit growth. Tencent’s stock more than doubled in value last year. This year, it is down about 30 percent from its peak.

最近，许多中国互联网公司都陷入动荡。上周，在公司报告利润增长罕见下滑之后，社交媒体、即时通信和支付巨头腾讯控股的股价暴跌。腾讯的股价去年翻了一倍多。今年，它比峰值下降了约30%。

JD.com, the Chinese e-retailer and Alibaba rival, has had a similarly rough year. Investor skepticism also has not spared a swath of smaller Chinese names, in businesses from e-books to gadgets.

中国电子零售商和阿里巴巴的竞争对手京东也经历了同样艰难的一年。从电子书到电子产品，一批较小的中国品牌也遭到了投资者的怀疑。

Alibaba’s share price has swung, too, as the company invests to broaden its reach in the brick-and-mortar world. It is opening its own supermarkets and modernizing mom-and-pop stores. It is teaming up with Starbucks to deliver Frappuccinos. It has unveiled a towering “car vending machine” in Guangzhou that dispenses vehicles for test drives.

随着公司投资扩大在实体经济领域的影响力，阿里巴巴的股价也出现了波动。它正在开设自己的超市和现代化的小型零售店，与星巴克合作推出星冰乐外送服务。它在广州推出了一款高大的“汽车售卖机”，可以为试驾配送车辆。

The more different realms of consumer life in which Alibaba has a hand, the more data it can amass on how consumers spend, and on what they want. That makes Alibaba’s platforms more useful to vendors, which in turn helps the company sell more ads and services to those merchants.

随着阿里巴巴涉足消费者的更多生活领域，它也积累了更多消费者如何消费以及消费什么的数据。这使得阿里巴巴的平台对卖家更有用，反过来又有助于阿里巴巴向这些商家销售更多的广告和服务。

But all that spending for the future has eaten somewhat into Alibaba’s profits in the present. And the uncertainty confronting China’s economy could still mean that the company’s sales growth hits stumbles.

但是，面向未来的所有支出都在一定程度上影响了阿里巴巴目前的利润。而中国经济面临的不确定性仍可能意味着该公司的销售增长遇到挫折。

Pessimism, along with the rising cost of living, has turned some young Chinese into penny pinchers. Alibaba said on Thursday that the value of sales on its Tmall platform, which caters to wealthier customers, grew by more than a third in the June quarter compared with a year earlier. That is somewhat slower than the 40 percent growth clocked in the previous quarter.

悲观主义以及不断上升的生活成本使一些年轻的中国人开始降低消费。阿里巴巴周四表示，与去年同期相比，为满足较富裕消费者的天猫平台的销售额，在6月这个季度增长了三分之一以上。这比上一季度40%的增长速度略慢。

Another sign of the times: A bargain-basement app called Pinduoduo has come out of nowhere to become one of China’s most popular online retail destinations. Nearly 350 million people took to the app in the last year to buy dirt-cheap products of sometimes iffy quality and authenticity. Pinduoduo’s parent company, which was started only three years ago, listed shares on Nasdaq in July.

时代的另一个标志：一款名为拼多多的廉价购物应用程序一跃成为中国最受欢迎的在线零售应用之一。去年，有近3.5亿人使用该应用程序，购买质量和真实性往往成问题的廉价产品。拼多多的母公司仅在三年前成立，于7月在纳斯达克上市。

A far greater value of merchandise is still sold on Alibaba’s Taobao platform than on Pinduoduo, and Taobao still has many more merchants. But Steven Zhu, an analyst with the research firm Pacific Epoch, said surveys of merchants and conversations with industry insiders had led him to believe that many of Pinduoduo’s more than one million merchants were also on Taobao.

在阿里巴巴的淘宝平台上销售的商品价值远高于拼多多，淘宝上的商家也多得多。但研究公司弘亚世纪(Pacific Epoch)的分析师祝征宏表示，对商家的调查以及同业内人士的对话使他相信，拼多多上超过一百万的商户之中，有很多也在淘宝上出售商品。

That suggests that these vendors might shift their energies this year to selling wares on the newer, hotter platform.

这表明这些供应商今年可能会将精力转移到在更新、更热门的平台上销售产品。

“From a sustainability perspective, I think Pinduoduo still has issues,” Mr. Zhu said. But for Alibaba, he said, Pinduoduo’s size “is something that you cannot ignore at all.”

“从可持续发展的角度来看，我认为拼多多仍有问题，”祝征宏说。但他表示，对于阿里巴巴来说，拼多多的规模“完全不可忽视”。