Alibaba sees its revenue reach over $36b

Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group Holding Ltd reported on Wednesday night its revenue stood at 260.35 billion yuan ($36.2 billion) during the October-December period, an increase of 5 percent year-on-year, while its net income reached 10.72 billion yuan, down 77 percent year-on-year.

The company has approved an additional $25 billion to its share buyback program through the end of March 2027, which demonstrates "our confidence in the outlook of our business and cash flow," Alibaba said in a statement.

"Our top priority is to reignite the growth of our core businesses, e-commerce and cloud computing. We will step up investment to improve users' core experiences to drive growth in Taobao and Tmall Group and strengthen market leadership in the coming year," said Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group.

Moreover, Alibaba will focus its resources on developing public cloud products and sustaining the strong growth momentum in international commerce business, Wu added.

For the quarter ending December 31, revenue from Alibaba's core e-commerce business, which refers to its Taobao and Tmall platforms, rose 2 percent year-on-year to 129.07 billion yuan. Revenue in its cloud computing business amounted to 28.07 billion yuan during this period, an increase of 3 percent year-on-year.

In addition, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group reported a revenue of 28.52 billion yuan, up 44 percent from a year earlier, and AliExpress, Alibaba's cross-border online retail platform, delivered over 60 percent year-on-year order growth during the period.

Alibaba's latest share repurchase program came after Co-Founder Jack Ma and Chairman Joe Tsai had aggressively bought the company's shares recently, signaling confidence in the company's prospects.

fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn