By Senad Karaahmetovic
Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) reported better-than-expected results for its fourth quarter to send its shares over 4% higher in pre-market Thursday.
The China-based e-commerce titan reported adjusted earnings per American depositary receipts of CNY 19.26 ($1=CNY 6.8986), beating the consensus of CNY 16.63. Revenue for the quarter rose 2.1% to CNY 247.76 billion, again better than the consensus of CNY 245.87B.
“We delivered a solid quarter despite softer demand, supply chain and logistics disruptions due to impact of changes in COVID-19 measures,” said Daniel Zhang, chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba Group.
Zhang added that he expects to witness “continued recovery in consumer sentiment and economic activity.”
Cloud sales increased by 3.3% to CNY 20.18B, worse than the average analyst estimate of CNY 21.34B. Investors were impressed to see that the adjusted Ebitda margin increased by 300 basis points to 24% from a year-ago period, while analysts were expecting 21.9%. Along these lines, Alibaba reported over 4,000 fewer employees at the end of the December quarter compared to FQ3.
"During the past quarter, we continued to improve operating efficiency and cost optimization that resulted in robust profit growth," said Toby Xu, chief financial officer of Alibaba Group.
Alibaba also said it spent $3.3B on stock buybacks in the quarter.
Vital Knowledge analysts said BABA’s results were “solid.”
“Revenue upside was driven by the core China Commerce business along with Int’l Commerce and Cainiao Logistics while Local Consumer Services and Cloud Computing fell a bit short,” they wrote in a flash note.