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The
company said it would be raising its 2017 full-year guidance for
revenue growth from 48 percent to 54 percent.
Alibaba is seeking new revenue streams with a series of data,
cloud, artificial intelligence and logistics projects as China's
e-commerce market begins to show signs of saturation.
Earlier this month, it submitted a $2.6 billion bid to privatize
Chinese department store operator Intime Retail Group Co Ltd,
saying it intended to use data to digitize offline shopping.
In recent months, executives including Chairman Jack Ma have
identified Alibaba as a data company, downplaying the strategic
role of e-commerce in its future.
In a statement on Tuesday chief executive Daniel Zhang said they
will invest in "big data and innovation to provide a seamless
online and offline experience for nearly half a billion mobile
monthly active users."
Revenue from Alibaba's core e-commerce business made up 87
percent of total revenue in the three months to Dec. 31, down
from 92 percent in the same period a year prior.
Alibaba said overall third-quarter revenue hit 53.2 billion yuan
($7.76 billion) versus an average analyst forecast of 50.1
billion yuan according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Net income attributable to the company's shareholders grew 43
percent to $2.57 billion, or $1 per share.
Revenue from Alibaba's core e-commerce business grew 45 percent,
up from 41 percent in the previous quarter. Revenue rose 273
percent to 4,063 million yuan at its digital and entertainment
business, and 115 percent to 1,764 million yuan in its cloud
business.
Alibaba has been growing its international operations, opening
data centers in a number of countries.
In the United States, Ma met then president-elect Donald Trump
earlier this month and promised to add a million small U.S.
businesses to Alibaba platforms over the five years.
Yet weeks earlier, Alibaba was forced to limit damage to its
image after its Taobao shopping website was returned to a U.S.
blacklist of sites peddling counterfeit goods. Meanwhile, U.S.
regulators are probing Alibaba's accounting practices.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Catherine
Cadell in Beijing; Editing by Savio D'Souza and David Evans)
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