Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba beat analysts’ quarterly revenue estimates on Tuesday as investments in one-hour delivery helped drive more users to its shopping apps, while its cloud division reported strong growth.
US-listed shares of the company opened 2% higher in choppy early trading.
The company reported revenue of 247.8-billion yuan ($35bn) in the second quarter, compared with estimates of 242.65-billion yuan, according to data compiled by LSEG. Still, adjusted profit of 4.36 yuan per American Depository Share missed estimates of 5.49 yuan.
Alibaba’s results come against the backdrop of a costly battle in China’s “instant retail” sector, or “quick commerce”, where companies are pouring billions into one-hour delivery services to capture market share.
At the same time, Alibaba has been investing heavily in AI, emerging as one of China’s leaders in the field.
In February, it said it would allocate 380-billion yuan over three years for AI and cloud investments. On Tuesday CEO Eddie Wu said he wasn’t ruling out further investment, given the supply chain challenges the group faces while trying to keep up with customer demand.
“We will be investing in AI infrastructure aggressively; the 380-billion yuan investment we previously mentioned might be on the small side given the customer demand,” he said.
Net profit fell 53% to 20.61-billion yuan, which was attributed to investments, though that still exceeded analysts’ forecasts.
“We believe these investments [in consumption and AI] will build long-term competitive advantages despite near-term margin pressures,” said CFRA analyst Angelo Zino.
The instant retail price war, triggered by aggressive discounting and subsidies from Alibaba, JD.com and Meituan, has raised investor concerns about margins and led to heavy cash burn, which Nomura analysts estimate amounted to more than $4bn industrywide in the second quarter alone.
Alibaba is less exposed than rivals thanks to its diversified business and significant war chest, and sees long-term upside. It believes instant retail could add 1-trillion yuan in annualised gross merchandise value — a commonly used metric for e-commerce sales — over the next three years.
The firm said its instant retail business has improved unit economics in recent months, with the cost per order falling by half since summer.
China’s Singles’ Day sales period — the longest on record, stretching from early October to November 11 — also brought heavy subsidies and discounts offered by retailers to spur demand.
During that period, sales across major platforms reached 1.7-trillion yuan, up from 1.44-trillion yuan last year, according to data provider Syntun.
Alibaba has also stepped up efforts recently to expand into the consumer AI market, where it has lagged rivals because of its greater focus on enterprise clients.
Recently it launched a free app built on the latest version of its Qwen large language model, which surpassed 10-million downloads within its first week. Still, that’s far behind market leader ByteDance’s Doubao, which has 150-million users.
Alibaba’s consumer-facing shift comes amid an intensifying price war in China’s domestic AI market, sparked by DeepSeek’s focus on low-cost computing and app development — a strategy that has forced rivals to slash prices and follow suit.
Reuters
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