China’s Alibaba Group reported its quickest quarterly growth in more than two years, with second quarter revenues jumping 61 percent, driven by the firm’s core e-commerce business and China’s steadfast consumer spending strength.
In the three months to September 2017, Alibaba reported revenue of 55.12 billion yuan (or $8.34 billion) for the quarter, its fastest pace of sales since a record IPO in 2014.
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Wall Street expected Alibaba to grow its revenue by 52 percent.
The e-commerce firm said revenue from its core e-commerce business hit 46.46 billion yuan, representing a 63 percent rise from the same quarter a year earlier.
Net income more than doubled from a year ago to 17.41 billion yuan, growing at a faster pace than the previous two quarters.
With the exceptional results, Alibaba now expects for full-year revenue growth up to 49 to 53 percent, lifting from its earlier estimate of 45 to 49 percent.
The news comes just after Alibaba revealed more details about its upcoming Singles’ Day festival, at a press conference in Shanghai.
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For Singles’ Day 2017, Alibaba will collaborate with 52 shopping malls to set-up high-tech pop-up stores in 12 Chinese cities and will convert 100,000 stores nationwide into “smart stores” that will offer innovations such as facial recognition payment and online to off-line [O2O] scan-and-deliver shopping – all part of the retailer’s New Retail strategy.
Since its debut in 2009, the annual festival has evolved from a 24-hour spending spree to a 24-day promotional period, with 15 million products and 140,000 brands (60,000 of them international brands) on offer.
In 2016, Singles’ Day recorded $17.8 billion in gross merchandise value, compared to $7.6 million in 2009.