Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. reported Tuesday a 52% third quarter year-over-year rise in net profit attributable to shareholders. Profit rose to $12.17 billion.
Revenue was up 37% at $33.88 billion, it said in exchange filings before the markets opened U.S. time Tuesday.
Some say China's largest e-commerce services provider Alibaba's financial results are a bellwether of consumer spending in China and an important barometer of its economic health.
Alibaba said sales were mainly driven by "robust revenue growth of our China commerce retail business" and the strong revenue growth of our cloud computing business. The quarterly gain was partly attributed to Alibaba's latest Singles' Day shopping campaign - which generated record sales of $74.1 billion, it said in a filing with the Hong Kong and New York stock exchanges.
Revenue from Alibaba's China retail business in the quarter ended December was $23.55 billion - an increase of 39% compared with the same quarter of 2019.
"China was the only major economy to achieve positive gross domestic product growth last year," Daniel Zhang Yong, chairperson and chief executive of Alibaba, said Tuesday. "Thanks to the rapid recovery of China's economy, Alibaba had another very healthy quarter."
"With the extended Singles' Day shopping event at a record in November...Alibaba is set for another barnstorming quarter," according to Martin Garner at research company CCS Insight.
Nevertheless, there are looming political problems with the company's future. On Tuesday, the Alibaba founder Jack Ma was omitted from a list of China entrepreneurs assembled by state-controlled news media.
Instead, a front page story published by Shanghai Security News featured Huawei Technologies' Ren Zhengfei alongside the founders of Xiaomi and BYD.
The schism between Ma and regulators was spread wide by the entrepreneur's speech last fall when he criticized China for hampering innovation. "We shouldn't use the way to manage a train station to regulate an airport," Ma said at the Bund Financial Summit Oct. 24.
"We cannot regulate the future with yesterday's means."
Within days, the dual listing of Alibaba's financial technology offshoot Ant Group was delayed indefinitely and authorities launched an antitrust probe. Ma disappeared from public view, only to reappear three months later in a brief clip filmed for his eponymous charitable foundation.
