(Reuters) – Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd posted a smaller-than-expected rise in quarterly revenue on Thursday as COVID-19 curbs and a worsening economic outlook stifled consumer spending.
Retail spending in China has sagged this year with consumers frustrated by the government’s strict zero-COVID policies that have led to frequent snap lockdowns and hurt economic activity.
Alibaba has also had to contend with stiff competition from the likes of Pinduoduo and ByteDance’s Douyin – the Chinese version of Tiktok – which have expanded their e-commerce offerings and taken more market share.
The company has also yet to fully recover from a regulatory crackdown on the tech sector that has curtailed growth opportunities.
Revenue grew 3% to 207.18 billion yuan ($28.96 billion) in the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a Refinitiv consensus estimate of 208.62 billion yuan drawn from 25 analysts.
Alibaba, which runs China’s largest online marketplaces Tmall and Taobao and owns a wide range of businesses from logistics to cloud services, reported net loss attributable to shareholders of 20.56 billion yuan in the quarter.
Excluding one-off items, Alibaba earned 12.92 yuan per American Depository Share.
($1 = 7.1540 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru and Josh Horwitz in Shanghai; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Devika Syamnath)
