Alibaba Reports Significant Decline in Quarterly Profit

Alibaba has announced a 66.7% year-on-year decrease in net profit for the third quarter ending December last year, amounting to 16.322 billion yuan. According to Ming Pao, when excluding non-cash and non-recurring items, the adjusted net profit also fell by 66.7% to 17.112 billion yuan, significantly below market expectations of 29.579 billion yuan. The group's CEO, Wu Yongming, stated that Alibaba's AI strategy has clear commercial objectives, aiming for cloud and AI commercialization revenue, including Model as a Service (MaaS), to exceed $100 billion in the next five years. The disappointing performance led to Alibaba's U.S. stock opening with a decline of nearly 10%, approximately 10% lower than its closing price of 132 yuan on the Hong Kong stock exchange.