Alibaba's Q4 Earnings Miss Raises Concerns Over E-commerce and AI Growth

Alibaba shares drop 4% in premarket trading after big profit miss

The Alibaba office building in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China, on Aug. 28, 2024. Alibaba shares fell on Thursday after the Chinese e-commerce giant missed earnings expectations for its fiscal fourth quarter on both the top and bottom line. Shares were down 4% in premarket trade in the U.S. at 5:51 a.m. ET. Here's how Alibaba did in its fiscal fourth quarter ended March versus LSEG estimates: While falling short of analyst expectations, revenue was nevertheless up 7% year-on-year. Investors will be looking at whether macroeconomic volatility has affected consumer sentiment in China. Washington's trade war with Beijing has created uncertainty in the world's second-largest economy, which has seen huge tariffs slapped on each other from both sides during the latest quarter in which Alibaba reported. Both sides agreed to suspend most tariffs on each other's goods this month. Over the last few months, China has also introduced policies to spur consumption and consumer purchases. In a move to boost purchases on its Tmall and Taobao platforms, Alibaba extended a partnership with Rednote, or Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like service in China. The deal allows Taobao links to be embedded in Rednote posts, so users can be taken directly to a product shopping page. Investors are also focused on Alibaba's efforts in artificial intelligence, where it has become a leading player domestically and globally. In April, the Hangzhou-headquartered company launched the latest version of its open source large language model, Qwen 3, which is being used to power Alibaba's AI assistant Quark. AI competition in China is red hot and was exacerbated by DeepSeek's innovative model launched earlier this year. Chinese tech giant Tencent meanwhile on Tuesday announced a 91% year-on-year rise in capital expenditures in the first quarter, driven by investments in AI.

Alibaba shares slide as Q4 revenue miss sparks e-commerce, AI concerns By Investing.com

Investing.com-- Alibaba's Hong Kong shares fell sharply on Friday after the company's quarterly revenue missed expectations, sparking concerns over weak Chinese consumer spending and sluggish AI-linked growth. Alibaba's revenue for the three months to March 31 rose 7% to 236.5 billion yuan ($32.8 billion), missing street estimates of 237.9 billion yuan. Earnings per share also missed expectations. The weaker-than-expected print was driven by underwhelming growth in both the company's core e-commerce and cloud segments. Weakness in e-commerce revenue was due in part to sluggish consumer spending in China, as well as increased competition from other players- chiefly JD.com- as they struggle to grow market share in a weak environment. JD.com (HK:9618) shares fell about 2% in Hong Kong trade on Friday. Revenue from Alibaba's cloud unit also missed expectations, drumming up concerns over the company's AI prospects, as well as those of its Chinese peers. Alibaba is at the forefront of China's AI efforts, and had released a slew of updated models this year as it moved to catch up with DeepSeek. Its cloud services are also widely used in AI development. But disappointing earnings from Alibaba Cloud could indicate that local demand for AI is not as robust as initially thought.