Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding said on Thursday its quarterly revenue climbed 61%, beating analysts’ estimates, helped by growth in its core e-commerce business.
The firm, headed by billionaire entrepreneur Jack Ma, posted 55.12 billion yuan ($8.34 billion) in revenue for the July-September quarter, above a 52.2 billion yuan forecast from analysts polled by Reuters.
Net income more than doubled from a year ago to 17.67 billion yuan, growing at a faster clip than the previous two quarters.
The second quarter is often slower for Alibaba as it prepares for the annual blockbuster Singles’ Day event on Nov. 11, a sales bonanza that shifts more goods than the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales days in the United States combined.
Alibaba (BABA), whose Tmall and Taobao shopping platforms dominate online retail in China, saw revenues from its core e-commerce business hit 46.46 billion yuan, a 63% rise from the same quarter a year earlier.
Up next for Alibaba is the “11.11” shopping festival, China’s largest online sales event that acts as a yardstick for the country’s retail appetite. Sales tend to dip in the preceding and following quarters.
Revenue from Alibaba’s fast-growing cloud computing business was 3.0 billion yuan, up 99% but slowing from a 130% rise a year earlier.