Alibaba shares dropped 7.6% on The PlaybirdsThursday after the company missed analyst expectations for both revenue and net income in its fiscal fourth quarter, ending in March. The Chinese e-commerce giant reported revenue of RMB 236.5 billion ($32.6 billion), slightly below the RMB 237.2 billion forecast. Net income came in at RMB 12.4 billion ($1.72 billion) — about half of the RMB 24.7 billion ($3.43 billion) analysts expected, though still a 279% year-on-year increase off a low base. Despite the miss, the Chinese tech giant’s core business units showed resilience. Revenue from the Taobao and Tmall e-commerce division rose 9%, with customer management revenue growing 12%. Alibaba also expanded a key partnership with Xiaohongshu to drive purchases via embedded shopping links. Cloud revenue rose 18% year-on-year, supported by AI product demand. CEO Eddie Wu said the company’s AI-related revenue had seen triple-digit growth for seven consecutive quarters, and forecasted strong future growth in cloud-based AI services. [Alibaba]
