Alibaba crushes earnings expectations, shares soar
Alibaba reported third-quarter results on Thursday morning that beat Wall Street's estimates for profits and revenues.
Strong user activity on mobile, and the record-setting Singles Day shopping event in November, boosted the company's performance and contributed to a 32% increase in revenues.
The Chinese e-commerce earned 6.43 yuan in adjusted earnings per share (5.81 estimated according to Bloomberg), and 34.5 billion yuan ($5.3 billion) in revenues (33.2 billion yuan expected).
Alibaba also amassed over 400 million annual active buyers for the first time ever.
During the third quarter, Alibaba's Singles Day event was a smash hit, scoring $5 billion in sales within the first 90 minutes that specials went live. It was bigger than any Black Friday or Cyber Monday ever.
Gross Merchandise Volume, which measures the total value of transactions that pass through the market, rose 23% year-on-year to $149 billion in China.
The company's shares rose by as much as 5% in pre-market trading.
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