Alibaba Posts Strong Gains in Quarterly Profit as China E-commerce Rebounds
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Thursday announced its financial results for the quarter that ended on June 30, 2020. Chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba Daniel Zhang praised results as “excellent”.
The Hangzhou-based company has beaten analysts’ projections, with revenues from the first quarter of its new financial year hitting 153.75 billion yuan (US$ 21.8 billion), a 34% year-on-year increase.
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Net income in the quarter jumped 124% to 47.6 billion yuan (US$6.7 billion). The year-on-year increase was mainly due to a net gain resulting from an increase in the market price of its equity investments in publicly-traded companies for the most recent quarter.
“We were well positioned to capture growth from the ongoing digital transformation, which has been accelerated by the pandemic, in both consumption and enterprise operations,” Zhang said in a statement. “We mobilized our entire digital infrastructure to support the economic recovery of businesses across a wide range of sectors, while also broadening and diversifying our consumer base to address their changing preferences in a post-COVID-19 environment.”
The annual active consumers on its China retail marketplaces reached 742 million, an increase of 16 million from the 12-month period ending March 31, 2020.
According to Maggie Wu, chief financial officer for Alibaba, the company’s domestic core commerce business has fully recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels across the board, while cloud computing revenue grew 59% year-on-year.
“Our strong profit growth and cash flow enable us to continue to strengthen our core business and invest for long term growth,” Wu said.
What’s more, Taobao Live’s ecosystem continues to strengthen with broader adoption by brands, retailers and merchants across all product categories. During the June 2020 quarter, Taobao Live’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) continued to grow over 100% year-on-year.
