Alibaba Pops on e-Commerce, Cloud Growth

Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) shares jumped on Thursday after the Chinese titan posted a sharp profit hike in the December quarter amid strength in its Cloud Intelligence unit and e-commerce segment.Alibaba said net income hit 48.945 billion yuan ($6.72 billion) in the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with an LSEG forecast of 40.6 billion yuan and with the 14.433 billion yuan reported in the same period of last year.Revenue came in at 280.154 billion yuan, versus analyst expectations of 279.34 billion yuan.The company’s stock has surged by around 50% on both the New York and Hong Kong exchanges in the year to date.“This quarter’s results demonstrated substantial progress in our ‘user first, AI-driven’ strategies and the re-accelerated growth of our core businesses,” said Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu in a statement accompanying the results.“Our Cloud revenue growth reignited to double digits at 13%, with AI-related product revenue achieving triple-digit growth for the sixth consecutive quarter. Looking ahead, revenue growth at Cloud Intelligence Group driven by AI will continue to accelerate.”Alibaba’s Cloud Intelligence Group posted year-on-year sales growth of 13% to 31.742 billion yuan in the three months to the end of December.U.S.-listed shares of the company were up $11.62, or 9.2%, to $137.41, shortly after the release of the results.