Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba yesterday posted its fastest revenue growth in the last four quarters, helped by growth in gross merchandise volume.

Revenue jumped 39 percent year on year to 24.18 billion yuan (US$3.7 billion) in the quarter ended on March 31.

Alibaba’s net income attributable to shareholders surged 85 percent year on year to US$832 million in the quarter.

For the full financial year that ended in March, net income rocketed 196 percent to US$11.08 billion.

The closely watched gross merchandise volume — a measure of value for online sales — rose 24 percent from a year earlier to US$115 billion in the quarter while mobile GMV accounted for 73 percent of the total amount.

GMV stood at US$485 billion for the whole fiscal year, which the company claimed made it the world’s biggest retailer.

Alibaba is seen as a proxy for the Chinese economy.

“Chinese consumers have a healthy balance sheet and ability to spend,” Alibaba Vice Chairman Joe Tsai told a conference call discussing the earnings.

“This will propel China’s ship from an export and investment light economy to a consumption-driven economy. Alibaba rides the secular tide as we enable more products and services, whether they are domestic or imports, to reach the consumer.”

Gil Luria of Wedbush Securities said: “Whatever they are doing must be working, and most importantly it’s a sign that the Chinese consumer may not be weakening quite yet.

“Alibaba represents a big part of the spend by Chinese consumers and so a re-acceleration in volumes is an indication that the Chinese consumer continues to be strong.”

Alibaba has been grappling with a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy. It is also dealing with signs of maturation after years of breakneck growth for Internet businesses as hundreds of millions of people came online.

To that end, Alibaba has sought to expand into areas outside Chinese e-commerce, and last month said it would buy control of Southeast Asian online retailer Lazada Group for roughly US$1 billion.

Non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income, Alibaba’s preferred measure for earnings, fell 1.4 percent to 7.6 billion yuan from the previous year — its first recorded decline.

(Source: ShanghaiDaily)