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Roar of the Dragon: Revenue up by nearly half at Alibaba as it expands into Silicon Valley

Firm names new chief

Revenue soared by 45 per cent at Chinese e-commerce and tat bazaar giant Alibaba to 17.43bn yuan (£1.8bn) for its first quarter, compared with the same period last year.

However, overall net income fell by 49 per cent to $463m (£300m) as the company made significant share-based compensation payouts to investors and employees alike.

The group also announced that Daniel Zhang, currently chief operating officer of Alibaba Group, will be next chief exec.

Alibaba is one of the largest web businesses in the world, with 350 million active Chinese buyers using its marketplace last year. The total volume of transactions to be funneled through in that period was $394bn (£255bn).

The company hopes to encourage more foreign businesses to use its marketplace to flog goods to China's burgeoning middle class consumers.

Maggie Wu, chief financial Officer of Alibaba Group, said:

“The fundamental strength of our business gives us the confidence to invest in new initiatives, add new users, improve customer experience and expand our products and services.”

Yahoo owns a 20 per cent stake in the company.

The firm has also splashed a lot of cash on US internet companies, such as its $200m (£130m) investment in photo-messaging app Snapchat.

The company's cloud computing biz Aliyun, a potential global rival to Amazon's AWS, recently opened its first data centre in Silicon Valley to support its overseas cloud expansion.

The division recorded revenue of $63m (£41m) for the first three months of the year. ®

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