Alibaba reported strong first-quarter revenue growth on Thursday morning as its core e-commerce and fast-growing cloud-computing segments provided a boost.
The Chinese e-ecommerce giant said revenue soared 61% year-over-year to 80.9 billion yuan, or about $11.8 billion, edging out the 80.88 billion yuan that analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting.
That revenue growth was well above the rest of its peers in the so-called FAANG + BAT group, which also includes Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, the Google parent Alphabet, Baidu, and Tencent. Facebook’s revenue growth was the next highest at 42%.
Revenue from core commerce was up 61% year-over-year, while its cloud-computing revenue jumped 93% year-over-year.
Alibaba reported net income attributable to shareholders of 8.7 billion yuan and diluted earnings per share of 3.3 yuan, which easily beat the 2.57 yuan that was anticipated.
Net income attributable to shareholders was affected by an 11.5 billion yuan hit as the result of an increase in the valuation of Ant Financial, causing shares given to Alibaba employees to be more expensive. Excluding that one-time impact, net income attributable to shareholders and diluted earnings per share would have jumped 35% year-over-year and 33% year-over-year respectively.
Adjusted earnings per share came in at 8.04 yuan, missing the 8.19 yuan that was expected.
“Alibaba had another excellent quarter, with significant user expansion and even more robust engagement
across our growing ecosystem,” CEO Daniel Zhang said in a press release.
“Our China retail marketplace business continues to gain share, with New Retail initiatives driving further revenue growth and enabling our retail partners to seamlessly serve customers. We are executing our plan of providing more value and choice to users along the consumption continuum, with digital entertainment and local service offerings that tap into big addressable markets beyond core commerce.”
Shares were up about 4% ahead of Thursday’s opening bell.