Alibaba (NASDAQ: BABA) can do no wrong. Just as it did in the quarter previously, the company reported strong revenue and profits that beat consensus by a mile. That is not the only good news: Singles Day’s revenue will give the current fourth-quarter a solid lift.
Not only did Alibaba’s Q3 beat earnings estimates by $0.26 to $1.29 a share, revenue of $8.29 billion beat estimates by $440 million. The revenue growth of 60.7% is due to Alibaba’s flawless execution on drawing customers back. Alibaba is taking a systematic and patient approach in getting customers to spend more time on the mobile retail apps.
The customer growth resulted in another quarter of Alibaba’s strong volume of merchandise sold. It continues to diversify its business as the e-commerce mobile sites do well. Alibaba Cloud, which looks similar to Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) AWS in its early days, showed strong growth by doubling in revenue. Media, mobile payments, and other merchandising apps will broaden Alibaba’s sources of revenue.
Looking ahead, Q4 will likely exceed analyst estimates. On Singles day (11.11 or November 11), Alibaba processed $5 billion in sales in just 15 minutes. Sales totaled $25 billion on the day, easily beating the $18 billion in sales last year.
Takeaway: Short-sellers should close their bets against BABA stock.
