August 14, 2023: On Thursday, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba reports stable returns beat, earnings increase. That’s the most significant annual increase in sales since the September 2021 quarter, according to Refinitiv data.

The company’s U.S.-traded shares increased by 4.5% in premarket trading.

Alibaba’s leading businesses, Taobao and Tmall Group, saw revenue rise 12% yearly to 114.95 billion yuan in the June quarter. The company noted that the Taobao app for online shopping saw daily active users increase in June by 6.5% from a year ago and rose to more than 7% in July.

The company’s push into overseas calls also bore results, with revenue from international commerce retail surging by 60% yearly to 17.14 billion yuan in the June quarter.

That international demand also supported drive income for Alibaba’s Cainiao logistics business up by 34% to 23.16 billion yuan during the same period.

Alibaba’s cloud business reported revenue growth of 4% to 25.12 billion yuan. The company said those results were dragged down by a drop in revenue from top customers and a reduced need for remote work, streaming, and education services in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, Alibaba stated it saw “strong demand” in its cloud business for training artificial intelligence models and related services.

“We believe the growth opportunity driven by AI services has just begun. We believe the technology revolution built by AI is not a short-term opportunity but the start of a new era,” management said in a conference call with analysts on Thursday.