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BEIJING—Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma downplayed a metric often used by his company and its rivals to measure the e-commerce giant's growth rate, as it faces a U.S. investigation into the practice.

At Alibaba's annual investor day on Tuesday, Mr. Ma said his company started using gross merchandise volume or GMV, to tally sales because eBay Inc., the San Jose, Calif., online marketplace, had used it, but that it wouldn't necessarily remain the industry's standard measure.

GMV refers to the total value of third-party sellers' transactions on the company's platforms and is distinct from Alibaba's revenue. But GMV is tracked closely by investors and analysts because it shows how fast an e-commerce company is growing relative to competitors.

"In our heart, we know this is not really the only index," he said.

The way Alibaba calculates GMV has been controversial, analysts say, because different companies define it differently. Alibaba and its rivals also tally transactions regardless of whether they have been paid for, such as items shipped for payment on delivery, which means the number can include the value of goods later canceled or returned.

Mr. Ma said investors have demanded different measures through the years from Alibaba including page views and click rate, in addition to GMV, which he said weren't all good measures of the company's business. Alibaba's true value lies in its commerce infrastructure, he said.

Alibaba disclosed in May that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had asked it to provide details of its accounting for a delivery affiliate, its operating data for the largest online shopping day of the year, and "related party transactions in general."

Last year, Alibaba disclosed GMV of $14.4 billion on Nov. 11, China's biggest online shopping day, called Singles' Day in the country.

The U.S.-listed company has said in a regulatory filing that it is cooperating with the SEC on its inquiry. It has also said that it was told by the commission that the request for information shouldn't be taken as an indication of any violation of federal securities law.

Mr. Ma reiterated on Tuesday targets to reach $1 trillion in GMV by 2020 and to serve 2 billion customers by 2036. He said Alibaba seeks to become the fifth-largest economy in the world in 20 years.

Mr. Ma said he has spent most of the past month meeting foreign government officials and overseas companies to promote Alibaba's plans for an "Electronic World Trade Platform" that will help small businesses around the world with cross-border trade.

Alibaba posted last month an 85% increase in quarterly net income to 5.37 billion yuan ($826 million), below analysts' expectations.

Write to Eva Dou at eva.dou@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 14, 2016 01:15 ET (05:15 GMT)

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