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00:00Let's start off with father because expectations were pretty low and so was to be the kind of give us some context as to how good these numbers are. Yeah it was a bit of a sigh of relief obviously for global investors who are have stuck with Alibaba and its decline. Obviously the stock has been down about 30 percent already year to date and been hammered since the regulatory crackdown began on it and its affiliate aren't in the autumn of 2020. So the shares rose 14 almost 15 percent. I do. I'll get to that in a minute. They were also up 14 percent and there were a couple of big beats. Well not big but beats. And that's how the bar has been kind of set so low. You can see that revenue was up about 9 percent. The estimate was for seven point one percent increase in revenue. So you know after Tencent disappointed the market a week before with even just eking out revenue gains of zero point one percent when they were expecting four point six percent. Ali Baba's beat was a positive also on adjusted net income. If you strip out those investment losses you had a beat as you can see on your screen. So adjusted net income was up. Revenue was up and the stock was up. But you know there's still a lot of headwinds for Alibaba. We do not have much clarity on the path forward for an easing of regulatory concerns even though government officials have talked up the platform economy. They have not necessarily delivered a timing on when a rescue will be allowed or what kind of policies will come down the pike. Also competition has been absolutely heating up since the anti monopoly campaign began to whittle down the real competitive advantage that Alibaba had an e-commerce. Can I bring up a Bloomberg terminal chart. We'll go into the Bloomberg terminal 6 1 8 5. You can see how gross margins have been squeezed over this time period. At Alibaba that is not the chart. But essentially you can see how the competition versus Pinto door versus May Taiwan versus JD the cut dot.com the blue line there is PDT pinned to the door beating Alibaba on the gross margin front as Alibaba is margins have come down. Are other headwinds obviously are going to be the Covid situation in China where retail sales plummeted in April. So this current quarter could be even worse than the first quarter you know because Alibaba has refused like it always does to give a current fiscal year revenue outlook. And this is where CEO Donald Junge weighed in. He says in April there has been significant pressure on of course Ali Baba's business. He is seeing some improvement in the Covid situation in Shanghai in particular. But considering the risks and uncertainties arising from Covid-19 which are not which we are not able to control and are difficult for us to predict we believe it is prudent at this time not to give financial guidance. One side note arts group also contributed about one point one billion dollars to Alibaba ISE earnings and though reports its report card a month later than Alibaba. So this report card from aunt was from the calendar fourth quarter through December but still it was a slight increase from year over year levels of one point three percent. So and contributing. So there's there's there's a little bit of good news down the line of this report card from Alibaba. But is it enough to put a floor on the stock fall. What about buy do buy. Do is a similar story. It beat expectations by two really focusing in on artificial intelligence investments cloud computing autonomous driving gains offsetting weak ad sales. Weak ad sales is to be expected given the lock downs in like the commercial center of China that being Shanghai sales rising eking out a game 1 percent rise to four point two billion U.S. dollars. There was a net loss again like Alibaba. The net loss was hurt by investment losses. They've stopped as well. Fighting has stopped. As of the calendar fourth quarter giving full year guidance or revenue outlook simply it's too uncertain to predict an ITC which is the affiliate of BUY do it listed in the United States. It posted its first profit net income gain since that IPO in 2018. ITC is the Netflix style video service of China. It is on aggressive cost controls and those will likely continue.

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Alibaba Sales Tops Estimates

Shares of Chinese internet giants Alibaba and Baidu soared overnight in New York after both companies defied China’s covid lockdowns and the slowing economy by posting better than expected revenue gains. Stephen Engle reports on Bloomberg Television. (Source: Bloomberg)

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