Shares of Alibaba Group surged in Hong Kong trading after the company released quarterly results that highlighted robust expansion in its cloud and artificial intelligence operations.
By 03:45 GMT the Hong Kong-listed stock had climbed as much as 8.4 percent to HK$144.0.
Quarterly performance
For the quarter ended March 31 Alibaba reported revenue of 243.38 billion yuan, equivalent to $35.3 billion, representing a 3 percent increase from the prior year. The company said revenue at its cloud intelligence unit rose by 38 percent, while external cloud revenue expanded 40 percent as demand for AI-related products picked up.
Alibaba noted that AI-related product revenue delivered triple-digit growth for the 11th straight quarter, reflecting rising business adoption of its Qwen large language models and associated cloud services.
Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders more than doubled to 25.48 billion yuan in the period, the company said. Management attributed the sharp increase in reported net income in part to gains on equity investments and to stronger performance from cloud operations.
Management comment and shareholder return
Chief Executive Eddie Wu said the company’s full-stack AI investments have transitioned from incubation into commercialization at scale, indicating that the firm sees its AI initiatives as a central, revenue-generating part of the business.
Alibaba’s board also approved an annual cash dividend of $0.13125 per ordinary share.
Market and sector implications
- The results underscore Alibaba’s accelerating revenue contribution from cloud computing and AI-enabled services.
- Strong external cloud revenue growth signals heightened enterprise demand for AI-related cloud products.
- Reported net income gains were supported by realized equity investment gains as well as improved operating performance in cloud.
These developments have direct relevance for the cloud computing and enterprise AI sectors, and they influenced investor sentiment in Hong Kong equity markets for the company.
What remains uncertain
- Portions of the earnings improvement were supported by gains on equity investments, which may not be recurring in future quarters.
- Continued revenue momentum depends on sustained business adoption of the company’s Qwen models and cloud services.
Readers should note that the company’s financial performance in the reported quarter combined operational improvement in cloud with one-time or variable items from equity investments.