Alibaba beats earnings and revenue estimates for Q4; stock rises

Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA) surpassed analysts’ targets for fourth-quarter earnings and revenue. The ecommerce giant’s earnings rose 50% to $1.28 per share, while revenue surged 51% to $13.9 billion. Analysts had expected the company to post earnings of $0.98 per share on revenue of $13.42 billion. Alibaba shares are trading up about 4% during the pre-market trading hours.

“Our cloud and data technology and tremendous traction in New Retail have enabled us to continuously transform the way businesses operate in China and other emerging markets, which will contribute to our long-term growth,” said CEO Daniel Zhang.

Core Commerce segment revenue grew 54% year-over-year to $51.3 billion during the March 2019 quarter. Cloud Computing revenue surged 76% to $1.15 billion during the March 2019 quarter, helped by an increase in average spending per customer.

For fiscal 2020, Alibaba expects revenue to be over RMB500 billion.

During fiscal year 2019, China retail marketplaces recorded total GMV of $853 billion, up 19% year-over-year, primarily driven by an increase in the number of annual active consumers. Alibaba expects to achieve $1 trillion total GMV target by the end of fiscal year 2020.

Mobile monthly active users (MAUs) grew to 721 million from 617 million at the end of March 2018. Annual active customers grew to 654 million from 552 million at the end of March 2018.

Last month, Alibaba’s US counterpart Amazon (AMZN) reported its first quarter 2019 results. Earnings beat analysts’ views while revenue came in line with estimates.

Alibaba stock, which closed up 2.84% at $174.84 yesterday, had gained 28% since the beginning of 2019, while dropped 12% in the past 52 weeks.

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