Alibaba Group, on Thursday said it would not provide a forecast for the current fiscal year because COVID-19 risks clouded its outlook, after reporting its slowest quarterly revenue growth since going public in 2014.
The markets, however, focused on Alibaba’s quarterly revenue and earnings beat in a sharply weakening economy and sent its shares surging 15%. Analysts said the results were more resilient than expected.
“As Alibaba’s large scale reflects the overall macro economy, we believe it is the key beneficiary of a potential favourable policy rollout in terms of lockdown measures and consumption stimulus,” Daiwa Capital analysts said in a note.
After two months of stringent COVID lockdowns put a squeeze on consumer spending, Beijing this week announced measures to shore up the economy.
Alibaba said on Thursday the restrictions weighed on its business by hindering merchants from shipping goods and making consumers focus on buying necessities. Online physical goods gross merchandise value of its China retail marketplaces - a key metric - fell by a low-teens percentage in April from a year earlier.
“To give you a sense of the scope of impact – based on consumer address, cities with new COVID cases in April represented more than half of our China Retail Marketplaces GMV,” CEO Daniel Zhang told a post-earnings call.
Alibaba beats revenue estimates on demand for niche China shopping services
While delivery services resumed in May, they were taking time to fully recover due to factors such as parcel backlogs, the company said.
The firm’s stock had lost a third of its value this year before Thursday’s gains.
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