China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd beat analysts' estimates for fourth-quarter revenue on Wednesday, boosted by growth in its core e-commerce and cloud computing businesses.
The company's shares rose more than two percent to 179.79 U.S. dollars in pre-market trading.
Alibaba makes money primarily by selling advertising and promotional services to third-party merchants that list products on Taobao and Tmall, two of its e-commerce sites. The business boomed in tandem with Internet adoption and mobile phone penetration in China.
Revenue for the January-March period rose 51 percent year-on-year to 93.5 billion yuan (13.6 billion U.S. dollars), a company statement said, beating estimates of 91.58 billion yuan, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Revenue in the Hangzhou-based company's core e-commerce segment, which accounts for the vast majority of its business, jumped 54 percent, while the smaller but fast-growing cloud computing unit surged 76 percent.
Net profit was 25.8 billion yuan, up more than three-fold compared to the same period a year earlier.
Alibaba is the world's third-largest cloud service provider, after Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc, and the largest in China with a market share of over 40 percent, according to data from IDC.
Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders rose to 25.83 billion yuan from 7.56 billion yuan in the fourth quarter.