Alibaba adds US$7.5b to its market value

Hong Kong

ALIBABA Group Holding Ltd added US$7.5 billion to its market value after reporting quarterly results beat estimates and raising its full-year sales forecast.

China's biggest e-commerce company increased its projection for fiscal 2017 revenue growth to 53 per cent, from 48 per cent previously, as Chinese spending stays strong and the company wrings revenue from fledgling areas such as cloud computing, entertainment and search. That may help assuage investors concerned that a deceleration in the world's second-largest economy is curtailing Alibaba's main online commerce business.

Despite a fairly stagnant user base of about 443 million, Alibaba benefited from a record Nov 11 Singles' Day spending spree, and gained a larger share of online advertising from rivals such as Baidu Inc. It also more than doubled sales from cloud computing in the December quarter. As transaction growth slows, Alibaba is generating more revenue …