Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, has almost doubled its quarterly profit and thus exceeded the expectations of Wall Street. Alibaba said the cloud computing had soared too, with its revenue also doubling and its customer base exceeding the one million mark for the first time. The Chinese customers are moving away from traditional stores and are spending online, particularly on smartphones, which are growing in popularity among the country's 1.1 billion adults. Since China has placed restrictions on foreign internet companies, domestic e-commerce firms such as Alibaba are benefiting from the boom.
Alibaba, which has made billionaire founder Jack Ma one of China's richest men and a global e-commerce icon, has seen its shares soar 80 per cent since last December on robust earnings, with the company fast approaching the market worth of industry leader Amazon. Alibaba said net income in the quarter which ended June 30 was 14.7 billion yuan (USD 2.2 billion), a year-on-year increase of 94 per cent.
The company's earnings have highlighted the strength of the e-commerce sector in China even as the country's broader economic growth has slowed. Overall revenues in the quarter rose 56 per cent to 50.2 billion yuan, beating the USD 7.2 billion average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Revenue from its core commerce offerings grew 58 per cent in the quarter to 43 billion yuan, while cloud computing revenue jumped 96 per cent to 2.4 billion yuan, it said in an earnings statement. "Our technology is driving significant growth across our business and strengthening our position beyond core commerce," the statement quoted Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang as saying.
