Alibaba's quarterly profit jumps 35% to US$3.7b

Alibaba's quarterly profit jumped 35 percent to 24.07 billion yuan (US$3.7 billion) as the company tapped booming e-commerce sales and other initiatives.

The e-commerce giant said today that it has also agreed to buy newly-issued equity from its financial affiliate Ant Financial to hold a 33 percent stake in the latter.

E-commerce income jumped 57 percent to US$11.3 billion in the three months ended December last year and total year-on-year revenue growth surged 56 percent to US$12.8 billion, Alibaba said. 

Gross merchandise volume of physical goods sold on the business-to-consumer site Tmall jumped 43 percent from a year ago, as major consumer goods, electronics and luxury brands have established flagship stores on the site.

Alibaba is also increasing its 2018 fiscal year revenue guidance to 55-56 percent, up from its previous estimate of 53 percent annual increase.

“Our core business generated significant cash flow of US$7.1 billion during the quarter, enabling us to invest in new retail, cloud computing, digital entertainment and globalization,” said Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu.

Alibaba has also been expanding to offline retail in a bid to synergize business to combat rival Tencent Corp. Alibaba and an affiliate invested in a 36 percent stake in Sun Art Group Ltd in November to accelerate expansion of its new retail initiative nationwide.

Income related to its new retail initiatives jumped over six times thanks to business synergy through various partners.

The number of monthly mobile active users of its consumer retail services grew by 31 million from three months ago to 580 million by the end of 2017.

Cloud computing revenue surged 104 percent from a year ago to US$553 million as it furthers artificial intelligence initiative to help enterprise clients raise operational efficiency and adopt data technologies.