Alibaba beats revenue, profit estimates on gains from cloud, commerce biz

Alibaba Group beat quarterly revenue and profit estimates on Thursday as its commerce and cloud computing businesses benefited from a shift to online shopping and working from home due to the coronavirus crisis. The company’s US-listed shares were up marginally before the bell. The stock has gained about 23 per cent this year. Sales from the company’s core commerce business jumped 34 per cent to ¥133.32 billion in the three months ended June. Alibaba said its domestic core commerce business has fully recovered to pre-Covid-19 levels, while cloud computing revenue surged 59 per cent to ¥12.35 billion.