Alibaba beats forecasts, but Trump shadow looms
Alibaba has beaten forecasts.
The e-commerce and cloud computing giant saw revenues surge as China emerged from lockdown.
In the quarter to June, sales at its commerce division were up 34% to just over 133 billion yuan - that’s close to 19.3 billion dollars.
That was slightly down on a year ago, but still enough to send its shares higher.
The company’s stock is up 23 percent this year, as investors pour money into businesses seen as ‘stay-at-home’ winners.
But if the Chinese firm seems unstoppable, it does have one big worry.
Alibaba is one of the big businesses seen as a potential target for U.S. President Donald Trump.
As tensions rise, he’s already put restrictions on Chinese-owned firms including TikTok, WeChat and Huawei.
Alibaba Chief Executive Daniel Zhang says the firm is closely monitoring U.S. policies, and called the situation ‘very fluid’.
On Thursday (August 20) the company could focus on the positives though.
It says the core commerce business has now fully recovered to pre-crisis levels.
Meanwhile revenue at the cloud computing division was up 59% on the year.
