Alibaba's Cloud Business Ambitions Taking Shape for Investors
- Revenue from the division almost tripled in the March quarter
- Analysts are betting cloud will drive bottom-line growth
Signage for Alibaba Group.
Photographer: Justin Chin/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
If there was one thing that stood out from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s quarterly earnings report, it was a tripling of revenue from its fledgling cloud business.
Analysts have highlighted sales from its cloud division, known as Aliyun, which soared 175 percent in the March quarter to more than 1 billion yuan ($154 million). Alibaba now has more than half a million paying customers for its services and Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu said it’s “getting very close to the break-even point” as it tries to build a challenger to Amazon.com Inc.