Alibaba beats revenue estimates

SHANGHAI: China’s Alibaba Group Holding beat quarterly revenue and profit estimates as its core commerce and cloud computing businesses continued to grow following China’s emergence from the coronavirus lockdown. 

Sales from the commerce business alone jumped 34% to 133.32 billion yuan ($19.27 billion) in the quarter ending in June, slightly slower than a year earlier but still enough to prod its shares higher after the results. 

The company’s stock has soared 23% this year as investors globally poured money into technology businesses seen as “stay-at-home” winners from the pandemic, and Alibaba said it had bounced back from a hit to Chinese consumer spending at the start of this year.

“Our domestic core commerce business has fully recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels across the board, while cloud computing revenue grew 59% year-over-year,” Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu said in a statement. 

Alibaba is one of the big businesses seen as a potential target if President Donald Trump makes further moves against Chinese companies, following restrictions on Chinese-owned video platform TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat.

“Today, we face uncertainties from not only the global pandemic but also increasing tensions between US and China,” Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang said.  “We are closely monitoring the latest shift in US government policies towards Chinese companies which is a very fluid situation.” On Monday, JD.com beat analysts’ estimates for quarterly sales, while Pinduoduo reported second-quarter results on Friday. 

Reuters