Alibaba is operating in Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, China, on December 29, 2023.
Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Shares of Alibaba jumped in premarket trade, as the company missed market expectations for revenue in the December quarter, but announced it is increasing the size of its share buyback program by $25 billion.
U.S.-listed shares in the Chinese e-commerce giant were more than 4% higher in pre-market trade.
Here’s how Alibaba did in its fiscal third quarter, compared to LSEG estimates:
- Revenue: 260.35 billion Chinese yuan ($36.6 billion) versus 262.07 billion yuan expected.
Alibaba had a tumultuous year in 2023, when it carried out its largest-ever corporate structure overhaul. It also separately implemented several high-profile management changes, with company veteran Eddie Wu taking over the reins as chief executive in September.
Daniel Zhang, the previous CEO of Alibaba Group who became acting head of the cloud business in December 2022, was supposed to stay on to lead the business unit, but unexpectedly quit in September last year.
On top of its structural changes, Alibaba also scrapped the hotly-anticipated spinoff of its cloud computing business last year.
More recently, two of Alibaba’s co-founders, Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, in January bought shares worth around $200 million in the Chinese e-commerce giant.
– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.
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