Alibaba thrives after emerging from virus challenges

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s revenue soared 34 percent to US$21.762 billion in the June quarter as the company emerged strongly from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in its home market.

“Our domestic core commerce business has fully recovered to pre-Covid-19 levels across the board, while cloud computing revenue grew 59 percent year-on-year,” CFO Maggie Wu said in a statement.

“We delivered a very strong start to our new fiscal year.”

Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was $6.736 billion, exceeding analysts’ estimates and justifying the 23-per-cent rise in the group’s stock value so far this year.

Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang said the company is well placed to take advantage of the ongoing digital transformation which has been sped up by the pandemic.

“We mobilized our entire digital infrastructure to support the economic recovery of businesses across a wide range of sectors while broadening and diversifying our consumer base by addressing their changing preferences in a post-Covid-19 environment,” he said.

The company reported 874 million mobile monthly active users on its Chinese digital marketplaces in June which represented an increase of 28 million, quarter on quarter.

In Southeast Asia, Alibaba’s Lazada Group achieved more than 100-per-cent quarter on quarter growth in orders, with general merchandise, FMCG, and electronics the driving categories.