BEIJING: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced today a massive 47 percent leap in net profit for the fiscal year 2017/2018, helped by a rise in smartphone and tablet transactions on its shopping platform.
Profit climbed to 63.985 billion yuan ($10.2 billion), boosted by a 60 percent rise in revenue from its core business, the online retailer said.
The New York-listed firm added 98 million active consumers over the year ended March 31, to a total of 552 million using its e-commerce marketplaces.
Overall revenue climbed 58 percent year-on-year to 250.27 billion yuan, with revenue from cloud computing up 101 percent and digital media and entertainment up 33 percent.
For the fourth quarter, the company saw revenue soar a better than expected 61 percent year-on-year to 62 billion yuan – better than the 59 percent rise predicted by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The company said it expects revenue to match that trajectory in the year to March 2019, rising 60 percent, as the firm drives diversification into a wealth of new areas, including offline business like supermarkets and delivery operations.
“Alibaba Group had an excellent quarter and fiscal year, driven by robust growth in our core commerce business and investments we have made over the past several years in longer-term growth initiatives,” group CEO Daniel Zhang said in a statement.
Alibaba, which has made billionaire founder Jack Ma one of China’s richest men and a global e-commerce icon, has been on a roll, regularly beating revenue estimates.
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