Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE: BABA) impressed the market on Friday with another big quarter of cloud services and e-commerce growth numbers.
Alibaba reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings per share of 91 cents on revenue of $9.9 billion. Both numbers topped consensus analyst expectations of 84 cents and $9.2 billion, respectively. Revenue was up 61 percent.
Alibaba reported core commerce revenue of $8.2 billion, up 62 percent. Cloud computing revenue surged 103 percent to $699 million in the quarter.
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Digital media revenue was up 34 percent to $840 million. Revenue from innovation initiatives was up 8 percent to $158 million.
Alibaba reported 617 million mobile monthly active users in the quarter, up by 37 million since December 2017. The company reported 552 million annual active consumers on its retail marketplace, an increase of 37 million on the quarter.
For the full fiscal year year 2018, Alibaba reported revenue of $39.89 billion, up 58 percent from 2017. Full-year core commerce revenue was up 60 percent to $34.12 billion, and cloud computing revenue was up 101 percent to $2.13 billion. Gross merchandise volume for Alibaba’s retail marketplace was $768 billion, up 28 percent.
“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,” CEO Daniel Zhang says in a statement. “During the past year we also doubled down on technology development, cloud computing, logistics, digital entertainment and local services so that we are in a position to capture consumption growth in China and other emerging markets.”
Alibaba’s 61 percent revenue growth in the quarter once again handily beat the 43 percent revenue growth reported by U.S. counterpart Amazon.com ( AMZN).
Looking ahead to fiscal 2019, Alibaba said it expects revenue growth to accelerate to at least 60 percent, implying full-year revenue of roughly $63.8 billion.
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Alibaba stock traded higher by 1.5 percent following the report, but Bank of America analyst Eddie Leung says there is plenty of additional upside for long-term investors.
“We expect Alibaba to remain the leading e-commerce company,” Leung says. “Its leadership position enables it to benefit from industry growth and economies of scale.”
Bank of America has a “buy” rating and $220 price target for BABA stock.
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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA) Stock Up as Revenue Growth Accelerates originally appeared on usnews.com
