Alibaba Q4 - Strong Cloud Growth

Alibaba passed $1 trillion in gross merchandise volume for the first time ever during the 2020 financial year end. The e-commerce giant released their fourth quarter earnings on Friday showing that their retail business did well under the pandemic as people were buying more groceries and fresh foods online under lockdown.

Alibaba's fourth quarter revenues were up 22% to 114.31 billion yuan, beating expectations. Profits tanked 88% year-on-year, as the coronavirus was in full force in China which led to the value of its public investments taking a big hit. The net investment loss was $1.09 billion as share prices went down due to the pandemic, but net income came in at $447 million for the quarter.

China's most valuable technology company said that their cloud business climbed 58% as educators and students were rushing to secure online solutions as an alternative to face-to-face interaction. However, this is the slowest growth in two years for Alibaba's cloud business, while the media and entertainment side grew by 5%.

The good news is that Alibaba's been slowly recovering in the month of April, with transaction volumes and user activity in their Chinese retail businesses returning to levels last seen in October-December 2020.

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