Alibaba Sales Soar To $9.3 Billion In 24 Hours

An Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA news and commentary site reported that Alibaba’s 11.11 Shopping Festival, known as Singles Day, soared to $9.3 billion on November 11.

The sales topped estimates of approximately $8 billion and smashed "the record set last year...cementing the 24-hour promotion’s place as the biggest online shopping event in the world," according to the announcement.

This year's sale saw over 1.2 million large home appliances, three million lighting products, 200,000 bottles of laundry detergent and 50,000 new cars sold in the 24-hour period, said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group’s chief operating officer.

"China has been talking about growing domestic demand for many years and today we see that real consumption demand is taking place in China," said executive chairman Jack Ma. "Alibaba hopes to make a contribution to the Chinese economy. We feel the Chinese economy doesn’t lack external demand but internal demand is much needed and we are fortunate enough to be able to tap this demand."

Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai commented at a press conference that "If we are simply sourcing our own inventory, keeping all of that in our own warehouses and selling everything directly to consumers we would not be able to handle this kind of volume. What we are doing is gathering the parties in our ecosystem… all those guys in the ecosystem who are working together for 11.11 today. So it’s not just Alibaba doing this, it’s the ecosystem."

Shares of the company rallied Monday and began to selloff on Tuesday. Meanwhile, TD Ameritrade’s Nicole Sherrod tweeted that Alibaba was the No. 1 traded stock at her firm Monday.

Alibaba recently traded at $114.87, down 3.6 percent.