This represents the company’s highest profit in two years, since it went public with a US$25 billion IPO. In terms of statistics, an 18% year-over-year increase in annual active buyers was recorded, increasing to 434 million, while revenue per annual active buyer was US$30 and revenue per mobile MAU (mobile apps unlocked) was US$21.
This boom in business actually highlighted Alibaba’s rapidly growing cloud-computing business during the second quarter of the year. Cloud computing revenue grew 156% year-on-year, with the number of customers more than doubling to 577,000, compared to the previous year.
Alibaba Executive Vice Chairman, Joe Tsai, reportedly acknowledged that these results may be surprising to some, “given the economic headwinds” that China has experienced in recent months.
In spite of the positive results, Alibaba has said it faces an ongoing struggle to strengthen some of its more recent investments; for example, that of the food-delivery service Koubei, which generated a US$37m loss in the first quarter.
