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Shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. were rising 2% in midday trading Thursday after the Chinese e-commerce company topped expectations with its latest financials and indicated that business trends improved as the June quarter wore on.
The company posted net income of RMB22.7 billion ($3.4 billion), or RMB8.51 per American depositary share, compared with RMB45.1 billion, or RMB16.38 per ADS, in the year-earlier period. After adjustments, Alibaba
BABA,
earned RMB11.73 per ADS, down from RMB16.60 per ADS a year before but ahead of the FactSet consensus, which was for RMB10.70 per ADS.
Revenue of RMB205.6 billion was essentially flat with the year-earlier total of RMB205.7 billion, though technically it marked Alibaba’s first-ever year-over-year decline in revenue. Analysts tracked by FactSet were expecting RMB203.5 billion.
“Following a relatively slow April and May, we saw signs of recovery across our businesses in June,” Chief Executive Daniel Zhang said in a release. “We are confident in our growth opportunities in the long term given our high-quality consumer base and the resilience of our diversified business model catering to different demands of our customers.”
Chief Financial Officer Toby Xu shared on Alibaba’s earnings call that he saw the “positive trend of recovery continuing through July,” with Alibaba’s management team expecting “that July will be even better than June.” At the same time, he expects it will take “more time” for consumer confidence to build “and sentiment to fully recover.”
CEO Zhang added on the call that while the company faces various “external uncertainties” around the economy, the pandemic, and geopolitical tensions, “the only thing we can do at this moment is to focus on improving ourselves.” To that end, Zhang is upbeat about Alibaba’s “meaningful progress” in narrowing operating losses for areas like its Freshippo futuristic supermarkets and the Ele.me food-delivery service.
“We are still in the process of improving the quality of operations across the organization,” he said.
Outside of commerce, Alibaba posted RMB17.7 billion in cloud-computing revenue during the latest quarter, marking 10% growth relative to a year earlier. In the previous quarter, year-over-year cloud revenue growth was 12%.
In regards to the cloud, “the slowdown in revenue growth was a result of multiple factors” such as the macroeconomic slowdown, softer demand from Chinese internet companies, and a delay in some hybrid cloud projects due to the pandemic, Zhang said on the earnings call.
Alibaba’s latest earnings report comes amid a tumultuous period for the Chinese e-commerce giant, which is not only dealing with competitive and macroeconomic pressures, but now also faces a delisting threat from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC late last week named Alibaba among a list of foreign companies whose auditing processes weren’t able to be fully inspected by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The company faces the risk of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange if its audit processes can’t be properly inspected or investigated by the PCAOB for three straight years.
Alibaba executives said earlier this week that they would “strive to maintain [the company’s] listing status on both the NYSE and the Hong Kong stock exchange.” The company then announced late Wednesday that it was adding Irene Yun-Lien Lee, the chairman of Hysan Development Company Ltd. and Albert Kong Ping Ng, the former chairman of Ernst & Young China, to serve as independent directors on its board.
“The new appointments demonstrate the Company’s commitment to corporate governance excellence and diversity at the board level,” Alibaba said in that release.
Alibaba’s stock has lost 3.4% over the past three months through Wednesday, while the iShares China Large-Cap exchange-traded fund
FXI,
has shed 3.7% and the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has declined 0.5%.
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