Chinese B2B e-commerce company Alibaba has published its performance report for the first half of 2009 ended June 30.

According to the report, the company made total revenue of CNY1.715 billion during the first half of the year, an increase of 21% compared with the same period of 2008, but its net profit decreased from CNY697 million in the first half of 2008 to CNY514 million, a year-on-year decrease of 26.3%. Its operating profit also decreased from CNY651 million to CNY564 million, a year-on-year decrease of 13%.

By June 30, 2009, the company had had 42.78 million registered users, increasing 31.5% over the previous year. Of the total, the number of corporate users was 5.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 46.1%, and the number of paid members was 530,000, a year-on-year increase of 44.4%.

Alibaba revealed in the report that it will implement a special dividend with total value of HKD1.01 billion, which equals about CNY880 million, to return the support of shareholders.

With regards to Alibaba's future strategy, David Wei, CEO of Alibaba, said that the company will continue to promote its loan scheme to aid the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises. With the aim of a transition from "meet at Alibaba" to "work at Alibaba", the company will establish itself as a platform that can help these SMEs with daily operations.