China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba reported an 86% profit slump in the March quarter despite revenue growing 7% from a year earlier, largely due to changes in the valuation of equity investments. Value of goods sold on Taobao and Tmall saw double-digit growth, as did order numbers on the two platforms, driving revenue of the company’s domestic marketplace up 4% to RMB 93.2 billion. Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said he believed that the strategy of “offering good merchandise at a competitive price while supporting excellent service” had helped the firm’s online GMV growth rate back to double digits. “Increasing customer purchase frequency and enhanced user experience is our number one objective this year,” Wu said on a Tuesday earnings call. The group recorded RMB 221.87 billion in revenue for the three months ended March 31. Within Alibaba’s cloud computing unit, AI-related revenue was a major highlight for the firm with triple-digit growth year-over-year as companies across multiple industries continue to integrate artificial intelligence into their businesses. [Alibaba]
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