By Denny Jacob


Alibaba Group reported lower-than-expected revenue in its fiscal second quarter as the Chinese e-commerce giant continued to contend with a weaker Chinese economy and fierce competition from younger e-commerce rivals.

The Hangzhou company Friday said its net income attributable to the company for the three months ended Sept. 30 rose 58% to 44.03 billion yuan, equivalent to $6.28 billion.

Revenue rose 5.2% from a year earlier to 236.50 billion yuan, below analysts' expectations of 242.98 billion yuan.

Once a darling of Wall Street and the dominant player in China's e-commerce industry, Alibaba has faced challenges boosting revenue growth amid a slowing Chinese economy and intensifying competition. Homegrown upstarts, such as PDD Holdings' Pinduoduo e-commerce platform and ByteDance's short-video app Douyin, have been eating into its market share.

Earlier this week, Alibaba's domestic e-commerce unit said it achieved "robust growth" in gross merchandise volume and a record number of active buyers during this year's Singles' Day, China's biggest online shopping festival. The company hasn't disclosed the overall GMV figure, a measure of total online sales, for the monthlong event in recent years.

The company has invested heavily in its domestic and international units in recent quarters to regain its past market dominance.

Its closely watched adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 4% to 47.33 billion yuan in the latest quarter.

Sales at Alibaba's core domestic e-commerce business, Taobao and Tmall Group, rose 1.4% to 98.99 billion yuan from 97.65 billion yuan a year earlier.

The company's cloud-computing unit posted a 7.1% increase in sales to 29.61 billion yuan.

On Thursday, JD.com, its closest rival, posted higher-than-expected profit and higher revenue for the third quarter on improved consumer sentiment.

Shares of Alibaba and JD.com have risen more than 15% this year in Hong Kong, roughly in line with the benchmark Hang Seng Index's performance.


-Tracy Qu contributed to this article.


Write to Denny Jacob at denny.jacob@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

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