The earnings beat expectations, with Wall Street analysts forecasting $2.77 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters. Alibaba’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) on China retail marketplaces jumped 40 per cent to $97 billion.
“We assume that stepped up efforts to remove counterfeit goods has a measurable impact on GMV this quarter,” MKM Partners analyst Rob Sanderson wrote in a note seen by the Wall Street Journal.
About two-thirds of its sales come from advertising and marketing services on the group’s consumer-to-consumer marketplace Taobao.
While announcing the results, the firm revealed that it has replaced its chief executive. Alibaba’s current chief operating officer Daniel Zhang will take over from Jonathan Lu, who will remain on the board of directors of Alibaba Group as vice chairman.
The results come just month after Alibaba’s record-breaking $25 billion flotation in New York in September.
Founder Jack Ma has said that the company would spread its business aggressively into the US and Europe following the listing. The e-commerce giant currently accounts for 80 per cent of all online retail sales in China.
In an earnings report released at the end of 2014, the company said sales rose 46 per cent to $2.54 billion, and net income nearly tripled to $1.99 billion from the year prior. After it posted Q1 earnings today, the group’s shares rose 7.5 per cent in pre-US market trading.
