The Chinese online trading giant Alibaba suffered a billion-dollar loss in the past quarter due to poorly performing investments. The bottom line is that shareholders lost 20.6 billion Chinese yuan (2.8 billion euros), as the company announced in Hangzhou on Thursday. In the same period last year, Alibaba had reported a profit of about 5.4 billion yuan. Analysts had expected net income of 18.8 billion yuan for the second quarter.
Revenue for the three months ended September rose 3 percent to about 207.2 billion yuan, also lower than expected. About 43.3 billion yuan remained before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) and special items, which corresponds to an increase of almost a quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Alibaba justified the development, among other things, with efficiency increases in its delivery service Ele.me and the shopping platform Taobao.
Alibaba shares initially fell in early trading but then turned positive. Most recently, the paper was six percent higher. (dpa)