Alibaba gets post-pandemic revenue boost amid Ant Group float woes
Chinese tech giant Alibaba has posted continued sales growth following the coronavirus lockdown, just days after Beijing slammed the brakes on Ant Group’s mammoth stock market float.
The conglomerate, run by billionaire Jack Ma, posted a 30 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue to 155bn yuan (£17.9bn) in the three months to the end of September.
The boost was driven by continued demand for its ecommerce services in the aftermath of the coronavirus lockdown in China.
Mobile monthly active users on its Chinese retail marketplaces reached 881m in September, up 7m from June.
This sparked a 29 per cent increase in revenue from the company’s core ecommerce business to 130.9bn yuan.
Alibaba also benefited from increased demand for cloud computing as a result of the pandemic, which pushed up revenue 60 per cent to 14.9bn yuan.
Net profit slumped 63 per cent to 26.5bn yuan, but Alibaba said this was due to a one-off spike in the same period last year from its 33 per cent equity interest in Ant Group.
The figures come after Chinese regulators suspended the $34bn dual listing of fintech firm Ant Group, which was set to be the largest ever initial public offering.
The move sparked a sell-off of Alibaba stock, but these losses were largely reversed today as shares rose more than six per cent on the positive results.
“The solid performance of our core commerce and robust growth of Alibaba Cloud are the direct results of our commitment to value creation for customers,” said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba chairman and chief executive.
“We remain focused on our three long-term growth engines – domestic consumption, cloud computing and data intelligence, and globalisation – to effectively capture opportunities from the ongoing changes in consumer demand and acceleration of digitalisation of businesses across our digital economy.”