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Earnings documents stored for BABA.

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Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-23

This Payments Stock Is Down 50%. One Fund Sold a $63 Million Stake Last Quarter

Motley Fool

ShawSpring Partners reported a full exit from Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) in its May 14, 2026, SEC filing, selling 1,148,861 shares in a trade estimated at $63.41 million based on quarterly average pricing. According to the SEC filing dated May 14, 2026, ShawSpring Partners sold its entire stake of 1,148,861 shares in Shift4 Payments during the first quarter of 2026. The estimated transaction value was $63.41 million, based on the average unadjusted closing price for the quarter. The net position change, which includes both trading activity and price movement, was a decline of $72.34 million. Top holdings after the filing: As of Friday, Shift4 Payments shares were priced at $43.24, down 50% over the past year and significantly underperforming the S&P 500, which is instead up about 28%. Shift4 Payments offers integrated payment processing solutions, including omni-channel card acceptance, POS systems, eCommerce platforms, and business intelligence tools. The firm generates revenue primarily through transaction-based fees, software subscriptions, and value-added services for merchants and enterprise clients. It serves a diverse customer base across retail, hospitality, eCommerce, and entertainment venues in the United States. Shift4 Payments, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated payment and technology solutions, supporting businesses with secure transaction processing and advanced software tools. The company leverages its proprietary platforms to deliver seamless payment experiences and robust analytics capabilities. With a broad set of solutions serving retail, hospitality, eCommerce, and entertainment venues in the United States, Shift4 offers integrated payment processing, business intelligence, and comprehensive software tools. ShawSpring exited amid a brutal stretch for Shift4 stock, suggesting management's recent execution has not been enough to restore investor confidence. Management acknowledged the difficulty in its first-quarter letter to shareholders, saying the year began with “significant volatility” but touting that the business “performed resiliently” nonetheless. Gross revenue jumped 32% to $1.1 billion, while EBITDA climbed 63% to $183 million.Meanwhile, Shift4 continues to expand beyond its traditional restaurant and hospitality roots, pushing deeper into sports venues, entertainment, travel, and enterprise commerce. CEO Taylor Lauber out...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-18

Baidu Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

MarketBeat

Uber’s AV Pivot: Growth Opportunity or Margin Risk? Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) reported a return to revenue growth in its first quarter of 2026, with management emphasizing that artificial intelligence has become the company’s primary growth engine and now accounts for a majority of its general business revenue. Co-founder and Chief Executive Robin Li said Baidu General Business revenue reached CNY 26.0 billion in the quarter, up 2% year over year. Revenue from the company’s core AI-powered business rose 49% year over year to CNY 13.6 billion, accounting for 52% of Baidu General Business revenue for the first time. → 3 Crucial Aerospace Component Makers That Analysts Love Why Alibaba's New 5nm Chip Could Be a Game Changer “This is an important milestone as AI-powered business has now become the majority of our revenue mix,” Li said. “Together, these results confirm that AI has clearly become the primary growth driver of Baidu, reinforcing our position as an AI-first company.” Li said AI Cloud Infrastructure revenue grew 79% year over year in the quarter, with GPU Cloud revenue accelerating to 184% year-over-year growth, following 143% growth in the prior quarter. He said demand is rising across both training and inference workloads, with inference growing particularly quickly. → 3 Stocks to Own If Gas Prices Keep Rising MarketBeat Week in Review – 01/05 - 01/09 Baidu attributed the momentum to its full-stack AI capabilities, including proprietary infrastructure, foundation models and applications. Li highlighted Kunlunxin, Baidu’s self-developed AI chips, saying the chips are seeing expanding demand from customers across industries and have been deployed in a single AI computing cluster of more than 30,000 accelerators. Dou Shen, executive vice president and president of Baidu AI Cloud Group, said in response to an analyst question that enterprise demand for AI infrastructure remains strong across sectors including aeronautics, autonomous driving, onboard AI, gaming and advanced manufacturing. He said Baidu is also winning customers in industries that historically had not been heavy users of AI or cloud computing, such as retail and IP-based consumer brands. → Peloton Stock Gives Back Gains After Upbeat Earnings Report Shen said GPU Cloud generally carries a better margin profile than traditional CPU cloud because of higher technical complexity, tight supply, stron...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-18

What to Expect From Nvidia's Earnings on Wednesday

GuruFocus.com

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) reports fiscal Q1 2027 results after the U.S. market close on Wednesday, May 20, with Wall Street expecting another quarter of exceptional AI-driven growth. Wall Street consensus sits at $79 billion in revenue and adjusted earnings per share around $1.81. That represents 82% year-over-year revenue growth and 135% earnings growth for a company valued at more than $5 trillion. The China question will dominate the call. H200 approvals are in place for buyers including Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), Tencent (TCEHY) and ByteDance, but no revenue has been recognized and Nvidia's guidance assumes zero China Data Center compute for the quarter. How quickly deliveries begin, and management's position on the U.S. government's revenue-sharing arrangement, will be one of the most consequential disclosures on the call. Investors will also look at forward Q2 guidance. Consensus for next quarter sits at approximately $87.2 billion, and a guide below that reads as deceleration even on a clean Q1 beat. The stock is up roughly 68% over the past twelve months.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-18

Baidu Stock Climbs After Q1 Earnings As AI Growth Outshines Ad Concerns

Investor's Business Daily

Baidu stock climbed higher early Monday after the Chinese search engine company reported first-quarter results ahead of analyst expectations. Baidu said that it earned an adjusted 12.06 yuan per American depositary share for the March quarter, down 34% from a year earlier. Often compared to Google, Baidu was one of the quickest Chinese tech companies to embrace AI.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-14

Alibaba Q4 Earnings Fall Short of Estimates, Revenues Rise Y/Y

Zacks

Alibaba Group BABA reported non-GAAP earnings of 9 cents per ADS for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 92.62%. In domestic currency, the company reported non-GAAP earnings of RMB 0.62, down 95% year over year. The company posted fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues of $35.28 billion. The top line beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.15%. In domestic currency, revenues of RMB 243.4 billion increased 3% year over year. Excluding disposed businesses of Sun Art and Intime, revenues increased 11% on a like-for-like basis. The revenue growth was driven by accelerated performance in Cloud Intelligence Group and continued expansion of the quick commerce business, while aggressive investments in technology, quick commerce and user experiences significantly pressured margins. The company continues focusing on two strategic pillars: consumption and AI + Cloud. Alibaba Group Holding Limited price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Alibaba Group Holding Limited Quote Alibaba China E-commerce Group (50.2% of Total Revenues): Alibaba generated RMB 122.2 billion ($17.7 billion) of revenues from the segment, which increased 6% from the year-ago quarter. Customer management revenues grew 1% year over year. Excluding the contra revenue impact from the new business development program, CMR would have grown 8% year over year on a like-for-like basis. During the quarter, the company integrated Taobao and Tmall e-commerce services into the Qwen app and launched the Qwen Shopping Assistant, an AI agent providing end-to-end support across the shopping journey. For merchants, it rolled out Wukong, an AI-native enterprise agent. The number of 88VIP members, BABA's highest-spending consumer group, continued to increase by double digits year over year, surpassing 62 million, demonstrating strong platform momentum to attract and retain a high-spending and loyal consumer base. E-commerce Business (78.8% of China E-commerce Revenues): The core e-commerce vertical generated revenues of RMB 96.3 billion ($14 billion), reflecting a 1% decrease from the year-ago quarter, primarily due to lower revenues from certain direct sales businesses. Quick Commerce (16.4% of China E-commerce Revenues): The quick commerce business generated revenues of RMB 20 billion ($2.9 billion), which grew 57% year over year, driven by order growth from the rollout of "Taobao...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-13

Nasdaq Surges Over 1%; Alibaba Shares Gain After Q4 Results

Benzinga

U.S. stocks traded mixed midway through trading, with the Nasdaq Composite gaining over 1% on Wednesday. The Dow traded down 0.24% to 49,638.96 while the NASDAQ gained 1.18% to 26,395.66. The S&P 500 also rose, gaining, 0.60% to 7,445.55. Leading and Lagging Sectors Communication services shares jumped by 1.6% on Wednesday. In trading on Wednesday, utilities stocks fell by 1.4%. Top Headline Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA) shares gained around 6% on Wednesday after the e-commerce and cloud-computing company reported mixed fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 results. The company reported quarterly revenue of $35.28 billion, up 3% from a year earlier and slightly ahead of analyst estimates of $35.23 billion. Excluding the divested Sun Art and Intime businesses, revenue increased 11% on a like-for-like basis. Adjusted earnings per American Depositary Share came in at 9 cents, missing analyst expectations of $1.12. Equities Trading UP Velo3D Inc (NASDAQ:VELO) shares shot up 47% to $20.66 after the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter financial results. Shares of C4 Therapeutics, Inc (NASDAQ:CCCC) got a boost, surging 22% to $3.88 following upbeat quarterly results. Tower Semiconductor Ltd (NASDAQ:TSEM) shares were also up, gaining 12% to $246.84 after the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter financial results and issued second-quarter sales guidance with its midpoint above estimates. Also, the company announced it signed a silicon photonics contract for $1.3 billion. Equities Trading DOWN Wix.Com Ltd (NASDAQ:WIX) shares dropped 30% to $53.31 after the company reported worse-than-expected first-quarter financial results. Shares of National Vision Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:EYE) were down 25% to $15.77 after the company reported mixed first-quarter financial results. TriSalus Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLSI) was down, falling 48% to $2.38 after the company reported mixed first-quarter financial results and cut its FY26 sales guidance below estimates. CommoditiesIn commodity news, oil traded up 0.2% to $102.37 while gold traded up 0.4% at $4,705.70. Silver traded up 4.4% to $89.390 on Wednesday, while copper rose 2.4% to $6.6880. Euro zone European shares were higher today. The eurozone's STOXX 600 rose 0.65%, while Spain's IBEX 35 Index rose 0.25%. London's FTSE 100 rose 0.3%, Germany's DAX rose 0.61%, while France's CAC 40 gained 0.23%. Asi...

TranscriptFY2026 Q42026-05-13

FY2026 Q4 earnings call transcript

Earnings source - 88 paragraphs
Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Alibaba Group's March quarter and full fiscal year 2026 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call over to Lydia Liu, Head of Investor Relations of Alibaba. Please go ahead.

Lydia Liu

Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining Alibaba Group's March quarter and full fiscal year 2026 earnings call. On the call with me are Joe Tsai, Chairman; Eddie Wu, Chief Executive Officer; Toby Xu, Chief Financial Officer; Jiang Fan, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba E-commerce Business Group. As a reminder, this call is being webcast live. A replay of the call will be available on our website later today. On this call, we may make forward-looking statements and discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. The forward-looking statements reflect management's current expectations that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our GAAP results and reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release and investor presentation. Our comments will be on year-over-year comparisons unless we state otherwise. With that, let me turn the call over to Eddie.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Welcome to Alibaba Group's fiscal year 2026 fourth quarter earnings call. Over the past quarter, Alibaba's high-intensity investment in our two strategic priorities of AI plus cloud and consumption is rapidly translating into tangible business results, with group revenue growing 11% year-over-year. This quarter, Cloud Intelligence Group's external revenue growth accelerated to 40%, and AI-related product revenue achieved triple-digit growth for the 11th consecutive quarter. China E-commerce CMR grew 8% year-over-year on a like-for-like basis, and the quick commerce market achieved significant unit economics improvement while maintaining market share. We are at a pivotal inflection point in the evolution from conversational chatbots to autonomous AI agents, which is directly driving explosive growth across three core workload categories: training, inference, and agent orchestration.

Speaker 12

Against this backdrop, Alibaba's AI has moved beyond the initial investment phase and progressed commercialization at scale. Next, let me walk you through four areas in detail: AI commercialization, cloud infrastructure, the AI application ecosystem, and our consumption business. First, the AI and cloud commercialization inflection point has arrived. This quarter, Cloud Intelligence Group's annualized AI-related product revenue has surpassed RMB 35.8 billion, continuing to maintain triple-digit growth. AI-related product revenue now accounts for 30% of Cloud Intelligence Group's external revenue. We expect that in about one year, AI-related product revenue will cross the 50% threshold, becoming the primary engine driving the cloud business's revenue growth. As a result, Cloud Intelligence Group's external revenue growth is expected to continue accelerating beyond its current 40% rate over the coming quarters.

Speaker 12

Given the certainty of long-term AI demand and our full stack technology advantages, we expect this trajectory to sustain strong growth over the medium to long term. This reflects AI's role in driving a comprehensive upgrade of Alibaba Cloud's entire business as its growth engine fully pivots from traditional compute and storage to models AI compute and agent services. We're also seeing exponential growth in AI model and application services revenue, a new revenue engine driven jointly by foundation model services and AI native software. Over the past three months, token consumption volumes on our model services platform grew substantially quarter-over-quarter as enterprise customers accelerated their shift from simple tasks to production scale and complex workloads, driving continued growth and demand for model and application services on the Model Studio platform.

Speaker 12

We expect model and application services annualized recurring revenue, ARR, inclusive of the Model Studio platform, to surpass RMB 10 billion in the June quarter and RMB 30 billion by year-end. The high-margin profile of this revenue stream is becoming increasingly apparent, making it a source of healthy, high-quality growth. Second, our AI infrastructure underpins our full technology stack and constitutes a durable moat. T-Head's proprietary GPU chips have achieved scaled mass production, with over 60% of compute capacity already serving external customers across internet, financial services, and autonomous driving verticals. As the only AI cloud provider in China capable of delivering self-developed AI chips at scale, we've secured autonomy over our compute supply chain while providing customers with highly competitive AI inference and training services. In an environment of compute scarcity, this structural advantage is favorable to our revenue growth and gross margin improvement.

Speaker 12

At the same time, our cloud products are accelerating their AI-oriented upgrade. The surge in agent workloads has significantly elevated demand for traditional cloud products built around CPU storage and containers, and we're upgrading these into infrastructure solutions optimized for the agent era. Third, at the application layer, we've built a complete closed loop spanning AI native software to a full agent ecosystem. Alibaba Token Hub, ATH, continues to launch new products, connecting consumer and enterprise environments with breakthrough progress in AI native software and coding agents. The Qwen model continues to iterate across reasoning, coding, and agentic capabilities. On the enterprise side, we've launched a range of products spanning intelligent workplace tools, AI coding, and business operations management, helping enterprises unlock greater productivity. On the consumer side, the Qwen app fully integrated Taobao and Tmall's commerce service capabilities on May the 7th.

Speaker 12

With this Qwen app is now deeply embedded across the ecosystem, spanning Taobao, Alipay, Amap, and Fliggy, making it China's first all-in-one personal assistant to seamlessly bridge everyday life productivity and learning. Fourth, across our consumption business and at the group level, we're prioritizing long-term value. Beyond AI, our consumption strategy continues to progress steadily with CMR growth rebounding significantly. This quarter, CMR grew 8% year-over-year on a like-for-like basis as we continue to improve user experience and merchant operating efficiency. The quick commerce business achieved significant unit economics improvement while maintaining stable market scale. In summary, the return on our investments in AI plus cloud and consumption are increasingly clear. AI plus cloud revenue growth is accelerating with improving margins.

Speaker 12

Model and application services ARR continues to grow at pace, and operating efficiency across our consumption business continues to improve. Facing the historical opportunity that AI represents, Alibaba is at a pivotal juncture where our technology investments are beginning to pay off commercially. We'll maintain our strategic resolve and leverage our full stack AI capabilities to support long-term growth. That concludes my prepared remarks. Next, I'll hand over to Toby to walk you through our financial results. Thank you.

Toby Xu

Thank you, Eddie. Our strategic priorities remain laser-focused on AI plus cloud and consumption businesses. Multiple growth catalysts, including technological advancement and business innovation, are aligning to create strong tailwinds. On AI plus cloud, our full stack capabilities span models, cloud infrastructure, and applications. With established leadership in every layer, the strong growth of our AI plus cloud businesses and the clear path to monetization of our MaaS platform give us confidence to make significant investments to extend our leadership. On consumption, we achieved a strong CMR growth on a like-for-like basis during the quarter, and our quick commerce business continued to improve UE and AOV quarter-over-quarter. Now let's look at the financial results for this quarter. On a consolidated basis, total revenue was RMB 243.4 billion.

Toby Xu

Excluding revenue from Sun Art and Intime, revenue on a like-for-like basis would have grown by 11%. Total adjusted EBITDA decreased 84%, primarily due to our strategic investments in technology businesses, quick commerce, and user experience, partly offset by the improved operating results, supported by continued growth in consumer management service in the cloud business and enhanced operating efficiencies across various businesses. Our GAAP net income was RMB 23.5 billion, an increase of 96%, primarily attributable to the year-over-year increase in net gain from mark-to-mark changes of our equity investments and disposal losses of Sun Art and Intime in the same quarter last year, partly offset by the decrease in adjusted EBITDA. Operating cash flow was an inflow of RMB 9.4 billion. Free cash flow was an outflow of RMB 17.3 billion.

Toby Xu

We are reinvesting our operating cash flow to enhance our competitive advantage in AI. As of March 31st, 2026, we held approximately $38 billion in net cash. Excluding debt with maturities beyond five years, our net cash position stands at approximately $59 billion. This balance sheet strength gives us confidence to invest for growth. Let's look at our consumption businesses. Revenue from Alibaba China E-commerce Group was RMB 122 billion, an increase of 6%. Customer management revenue increased by 1%. To help merchants grow their businesses and increase willingness to spend on our platform, we upgraded our business development program for select merchants during the quarter. Under which, the level of platform subsidies for these merchants is directly tied to their marketing spend on our platform.

Toby Xu

For accounting purpose, such subsidies previously recorded as sales and marketing expenses are now recorded as a contra revenue item to CMR. Accordingly, CMR grew 1% year-over-year during the quarter. Excluding the contra revenue impact from the program, on a like-for-like basis, CMR would have grown 8% year-over-year. Revenue from our quick commerce business increased 57% to RMB 20 billion. The quick commerce business further improved UE and increased the AOV quarter-over-quarter, primarily driven by order mix optimization. Alibaba China E-commerce Group adjusted EBITDA was RMB 24 billion, a decrease of 40%, primarily due to the investment in quick commerce, user experience and technology. While there's positive contribution from customer management service.

Toby Xu

Excluding loss from our quick commerce business, our Alibaba China E-commerce Group EBITDA would have been stable year-over-year, and will fluctuate quarter-over-quarter due to significant investment in merchant retention and the user experience. Revenue from AIDC grew 6% this quarter. AIDC's adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed significantly year-over-year, approaching break-even, driven by a combination of logistics optimization and operating efficiency. The unit economics of AliExpress's Choice business continued to improve substantially on a sequential basis. Next, let's look at the business updates and results of Cloud Intelligence Group. Our cloud business delivered another quarter of accelerating growth. Revenue from external customers accelerated to grow 40%. AI-related products continued to lead this momentum. We delivered our 11th consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth in AI revenue. Its share of external cloud revenue continued to increase, now account for 30%.

Toby Xu

This quarter's AI revenue is RMB 9 billion. The annual revenue run rate is RMB 36 billion, or $5.3 billion. This is a clear reflection of the scale and acceleration in our AI business. The adjusted EBITDA margin remained relatively stable at 9.1%. All other segment revenue decreased by 21% to RMB 65.5 billion, mainly due to the disposal of Sun Art and Intime businesses, as well as the decrease in revenue from [Cainiao], partially offset by the increase in revenue from Freshippo and Amap. All others adjusted EBITDA was a loss of RMB 21.2 billion, primarily due to the increased investment in technology businesses, including foundation models and the consumer facing Qwen [app]. As we close this fiscal year, we remain committed to delivering consistent shareholder returns.

Toby Xu

Our board of directors has approved an annual dividend of $1.05 per ADS. We will continue to invest decisively in AI and consumption businesses, where we seek significant long-term growth potential and our competitive advantages are compounding. We believe these investments to deliver growth and returns over time, ultimately creating greater value for our shareholders. Thank you. We will now open for Q&A.

Lydia Liu

Hi, everyone. You're welcome to ask questions in Chinese or English. A third party translator will provide consecutive interpretation. In the case of any discrepancy, our management statement in the original language will prevail.

Lydia Liu

[Non-English content] Operator, please start Q&A session. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. To give people the opportunity to ask questions, please keep yourself to no more than one question at a time. Your first question comes from Ronald Keung with Goldman Sachs.

Ronald Keung

Thank you, Joe, Eddie, Toby, Fan and Lydia. Thanks for sharing the very sizable AI MaaS and applications ARR scale and the target for the first time. I just wanna ask how much of that ARR is driven by our in-house models like Qwen versus third-party models? Given the recent token price hikes, what would be the implications to MaaS and also our Cloud margins as a result? Thank you.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thank you for that question. This quarter marks the first time that we announced the latest figure for model and application service revenue. That really comprises mainly two things. On the one hand it includes revenue from API calls on MaaS on our Bailian platform. It also includes revenues from our AI software subscriptions. At present, most of the revenue is coming from the first of those two pieces. This is an open platform, so we are providing access both to our proprietary models as well as third-party models, including open source models and closed models. For the time being, most of that revenue is coming from our own proprietary models, including Qwen as well as T-MOR, as well as our voice and video generating models.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Your second question was also a really important one, because in the past quarter over the past few months, we've seen a very large shift in the market where AI is shifting from functioning as a conversational chatbot to providing agentic capabilities. These agents are increasingly capable of solving for very complex problems, meaning that they need to do a lot more inferencing than in the past. Precisely because these agents can help to solve very complex tasks, customers acceptance for higher prices and we have increased per token prices is good, and the demand continues to be high and growing. In fact, our ability to supply this demand is not able to keep up with all the growth and demand.

Speaker 12

We actually have a lot of customers still waiting to access the service. Inherently MaaS will have higher gross margin than IaaS. That's important to know. I can also add a few important points on top of that. First is that the development of reasoning or inferencing technology still continues to advance. Every quarter we're seeing new results in terms of optimization in reasoning and inferencing with continuous incremental effects in terms of the token capacity of a single server and a single card.

Speaker 12

At the same time as the capabilities of models continue to strengthen and price of the models continues to increase in the next year or two, we see that this should be a process of continued price improvement. I think from this point of view, the rapid growth in this business over the next few quarters will result in a very positive impact on our overall gross profit margin.

Operator

Your next question comes from Kenneth Fong with UBS.

Kenneth Fong

Hi, good evening management, thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the very strong progress on the AI. I have a question regarding the return on invested capital on the AI investment. While our AI investment have driven impressive 40% cloud growth, they have also created significant drag on the group free cash flow as well as our EBITDA. How should investor assess the return on this investment? What's the management framework for balancing the aggressive AI spending versus earnings stability? Thank you.

Speaker 12

[Non-English content]

Toby Xu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thanks Kenneth for that question. This is Toby. I'm gonna start by answering that first question, because I think it's important and of interest to everybody. The question is the reason for the negative free cash flow and how we are managing that. Starting there, the answer is that the negative free cash flow is primarily due to the very significant investments we've been making in AI over the past year, and we've been extremely resolute in making those investments precisely because we've seen the historic opportunity of AI.

Toby Xu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

We've been very resolute in making those investments over the past year. Looking forward to the next two years, we intend to be equally resolute in continuing these investments. Again, because we see this as a critical window of opportunity that will be open for that period for the next couple of years. Additionally, there's really been no big change in the way that we look at cash flow. First of all, the major contributor of operating cash flow for the group is Taobao and Tmall, and that cash flow is very stable. Looking ahead over the next two years in terms of quick commerce, the losses will narrow very substantially. At the same time, AIDC will develop from making a loss to being profitable. We see these developments over the next two years as being highly positive for our net cash flow.

Toby Xu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Another important point to be added is that our ongoing investments in cloud infrastructure will increase the revenues that we can achieve from our AI and cloud offerings. At the same time, we will increase gross margins in those very same offerings. In those ways, we expect that we can achieve higher net cash flow from our cloud and AI business, and that cash flow can in turn be used to support the development of the relevant infrastructure. An additional point is that we have a very strong balance sheet. As of March 31st, 2026, we held approximately $38 billion in net cash. If you exclude debt with maturities beyond five years, our net cash position stands at approximately $58 billion.

Speaker 12

That balance sheet strength also gives us confidence to reinvest for growth. Beyond that, I would also add that we have a very strong capacity for pursuing financing in capital markets, and we have the capability to raise capital from the markets as we need to support our development. I wanted to open with that in response to your question on cash flows, and I'll pause there to see if Eddie has anything to add.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thank you. You asked about our investments in AI and the ROI on those investments going forward. On top of what Toby's already said, I'd like to add a few notes regarding where we're heading. I think the best analogy is manufacturing. In other words, in order to be able to manufacture more and sell more in the future and achieve more revenue, what we're doing today is investing capital to build 2 factories, if you like. The first we can call the AI training factory, the second we can call the inferencing factory. Both of those factories need to be powered by our AI data centers, and that requires the investment of cash flow today. However, looking to the future, the pathway to achieving a solid return on investment in those factories, in those areas is very clear.

Speaker 12

On the To B side by monetizing our To B offerings, including our cloud-based IaaS as well as MaaS, of course, and our AI native apps. And I can tell you that today there isn't a single card on our servers that is idle. We see the ROI on this investment in the next three to five-year period as being extremely clear.

Lydia Liu

Next question please.

Operator

Your next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.

Thomas Chong

Hi, good evening. Thanks management for taking my question. My question is on quick commerce. We have talked about the improvement in UE in the prepared remarks. I just want to get some more color about the drivers behind in terms of AOV, subsidies ratio, fulfillment ratio, et cetera. On top of that, I remember last time we talked about the outlook for quick commerce over the next couple of years. Is there any update or changes in terms of how we think about the landscape or the UE in the next three years? Thank you.

Speaker 12

[Non-English content]

Jiang Fan

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thank you. As a result of our strong investment in quick commerce, we've achieved very rapid growth in quick commerce over the past year, marking a very fundamental shift in our market position. Compared to the same quarter last year, which was of course prior to all this large-scale investment, both our order volume and our market share have increased significantly. Overall order volume was 2.7x that of the same quarter last year with non-food orders at 3x. From April onwards, while maintaining order volume, we've continued to drive substantial improvement in UE through enhanced fulfillment, logistics efficiency, as well as order mix optimization. We are confident that UE will turn positive by the end of fiscal year 2027.

Jiang Fan

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

While optimizing UE, we will continue to innovate to improve the experience for both consumers and merchants, thereby sustaining our long term competitiveness in quick commerce. We're confident that our quick commerce business will achieve overall profitability in the future at new scale and market share. This quarter, quick commerce continued to generate synergies with our conventional e-commerce business, as demonstrated in driving customer acquisition, enhancing user engagement, fulfilling diverse consumer demands, increasing transactions, improving monetization, and supporting logistics infrastructure. In terms of categories, quick commerce continued to drive sales in various categories, especially food and fresh produce and healthcare, and contributed to Freshippo and Tmall Supermarket accelerated growth. In our conventional e-commerce business, we saw GMV and CMR demonstrate strong growth momentum in the March quarter, and quick commerce played a vital role in driving that performance.

Lydia Liu

Next question please.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jialong Shi with Nomura.

Jialong Shi

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Good evening management for taking my question. I have a follow-up based on your opening remarks concerning MaaS. I'm wondering, first of all, what are the major advantages that Alibaba has when compared to the other major AI platforms in China, as well as Chinese AI start ups? In the United States, we see that AI agents, especially coding are the fastest growth track in AI. I'm wondering when you think we'll see that kind of growth in China in terms of AI coding. We also know that Chinese customers are less willing than U.S. customers to pay for SaaS. So do you think that that means that the future commercialization of Chinese AI coding products might have less potential than we see with the U.S. counterparts?

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thank you. Well, the way we define our MaaS platform, Bailian Model Studio is as an open AI inferencing platform. Certainly at present, the majority of Bailian's revenue is driven by our own proprietary models. You know, in contrast to the AI startups in China, I think that we are investing at a much higher scale and across a much broader range of different model types. In contrast, those startups may tend to focus on a very narrow particular vertical segment, and they can move rapidly ahead with that kind of focus. You know, strictly in terms of our MaaS business, I think those AI startups really are partners rather than competitors.

Speaker 12

At Alibaba, we particularly place emphasis on our model capabilities and developing them across all different spaces and all verticals to serve a very broad and diverse set of needs, including our coding model capabilities, including image-based models. Both [Non-English content] and [HappyHorse], as well as these new world models and of course voice models as well. We aim to provide all different kinds of models to meet all different kinds of needs. This is different, I think, from those startups. At the same time, those startups are our partners.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

OK. The other part of your question was about when we can see the similar kind of growth in China as is being witnessed in the U.S. around AI coding. I would say in terms of what we're seeing based on the trends that we ourselves see on Bailian, as well as the experience of some of these AI startups in China who work closely with us. You know, I would say China is already there. Most of the growth that we're seeing in utilization from say November or December of last year through to May of this year has been driven by capability upgrades in terms of coding.

Speaker 12

These models are not just able to replace software engineers. Basically, they're able to solve a wide array of very complex tasks beyond just coding per se in any kind of digitalized productivity scenario. You know, we've seen AI coding capabilities improve significantly in both the U.S. and in China. These capabilities are capable of supporting much more than just coding per se. It can address a whole wide range of very complex tasks in the workplace insofar as those tasks can be digitalized. Looking ahead to the next two to three years, we see this as a very, very important growth driver.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

On your other comment, we have also taken note of the lower willingness in China to pay for SaaS. However, I think that is poised to change as the models become increasingly powerful and are able to truly solve for very complex tasks, very complex problems as they are providing truly valuable intelligence. You know, I think we can expect to see the same demand for that kind of service in China as in the U.S. You know, in a certain sense, when the value provided by tokens exceeds the cost of those tokens, the demand for tokens will become infinite in a sense. We see growth in AI demand as a long-term certainty.

Speaker 12

And I can also share some numbers with you in terms of the growth that we're seeing on our own Bailian platform from November, December last year through to May of this year. It's higher than a 10x growth. In terms of our ARR, it's already over RMB 8 billion. I think this quarter it's highly certain that we can achieve ARR of over RMB 10 billion.

Lydia Liu

Next question, please.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ellie Jiang with Macquarie.

Ellie Jiang

Good evening, management. Thank you very much for taking my question. Just wanted to stay on the topics of that global comparisons. If you look at globally, the overseas peers seems to have captured the most immediate ROIs in enterprise agentic workflows, whereas for the consumer and the monetization which remain a bit lagged. Going forward, considering that Alibaba is investing kind of in multi fronts for infrastructure models, cloud and Qwen app, how do we evaluate the strategic priority and resources allocation between To B and To C initiatives? If going forward enterprise side continues to gain more traction, will we consider gradually shift more resources away from Qwen app to Cloud and MaaS? Thank you.

Speaker 12

[Non-English content]

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thanks for that question. It's a good question, but I think you know fundamentally from the perspective of AI development, it's really all about a paradigm shift in computing and it's about leveraging this new technology to help users whoever they are to complete tasks and solve problems. That applies equally on the To C side as well as on the To B side. Now certainly at present we see higher willingness to pay on the To B side because it's easier to show a business case with compelling ROI for business. At present most of our infrastructure resources are therefore channeled to the To B side.

Speaker 12

At the end of the day AI ultimately is an invention that's there to be a helper and assistant to humans to help humans with a whole range of things spanning their own daily life, their studies and their work. What AI does really is the same across all of those scenarios. It's about solving problems. That's true for To B and for To C. Certainly there's less willingness to pay today for To C.

Speaker 12

We're already seeing a business model where consumers are paying for individual usage in the U.S. and I'm confident that the same will come to be the case in China, especially as the technology improves as it's better able to help them solve real problems in their, in their daily lives. We think that ultimately this will be the same business model internationally and I think we'll probably get there in China in the next say one to two years.

Lydia Liu

Next question please.

Operator

Our next question comes from Joyce Ju with Bank of America.

Joyce Ju

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thanks management. I have a follow up question also on the future growth of the cloud business. I just like to understand what your view is on EBITDA margins in the cloud business over the next few quarters. Do you think as this business accelerates we can expect to see similar margins as we see in your international peers?

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

I think when it comes to the deep penetration of AI technology across all different industries, we're still really in the early days of that long process. Our objective is clear. Our objective is to achieve growth, to drive growth, to drive growth in token consumption, and to acquire larger market share. We aim to maintain growth that is faster than the market average in order to gain larger market share and firmly cement our absolute market leadership position. Those are the primary objectives, and margin is still secondary. The other thing to be pointed out is that for the next three or even five years to come, there are physical constraints on production capacity for chips, for memory, for the physical things that are needed to support all this growth in demand.

Speaker 12

An advantage that we have at Alibaba Cloud is the scale of our customer base, as well as the scale effect from all of the CapEx that we've put in over these years. You know, but in this environment of market scarcity, we're already seeing that the cost for us to deploy one new server this year is double what that same server would have cost a year ago. The cost inflation has been over 100%. Given that higher replacement cost effect, you know, we have a certain pricing power with respect to new customers and also old customers. I think in the long term, the asset pricing effect will be positive for our revenues going forward. Secondly, you know, we see very rapid growth in MaaS as we reported to you.

Speaker 12

Inherently, as we said, you know, MaaS represents a much higher level of gross margin than IaaS or traditional types of IT operations. As demand for inference continues to grow exponentially. We expect this will be very positive for our gross margin. Due to the optimization of our reasoning technology, the output capacity, the productivity of a single card will continue to rise. An additional factor is as we continue to scale up the deployment of T-Head, the T-Head chips represent the highest value for money compute power on the cloud platform, and that also will contribute to a better gross margin. For several objective reasons that I've outlined, I think overall in the next two to three years, we can expect to see significantly higher gross margin for Alibaba Cloud, and we can expect to start to see that in the next one to two quarters.

Lydia Liu

[Peter], let's take the last question. Thank you.

Operator

Your last question comes from Gary Yu with Morgan Stanley.

Gary Yu

Hi. For the opportunity. I have a question regarding CapEx. What kind of level of CapEx investment is required in order to satisfy the demand from both MaaS and also the long-term cloud revenue? Management mentioned about T-Head opportunity. What is the current penetration of T-Head being deployed on Alibaba Cloud? As this penetration increase margin uplift we should expect from our in-house chip. Thank you.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

Thanks. The first question is quite an important one. Actually in our prepared remarks delivered at the last quarter's earnings call, we set out a forecast for the coming five years for revenues, and it was a very high target. Essentially, I think if you compare where things were in the year 2022 before this explosive growth in AI models and what we expect to need in 2033, I think we're talking about 10x increase. We need 10x the amount of data center infrastructure compared to what we had in 2022. There are different ways to get that compute capacity. Some of it can be CapEx, part of it can also be OpEx, and we're actually now acquiring quite a bit of computing capacity using OpEx.

Speaker 12

The situation is complex today for reasons we've discussed, I think it's likely given that kind of investment that we will overshoot the original CapEx figure that we had stated of RMB 380 billion. You know, at the same time, we can acquire some compute through OpEx. As we have our own proprietary T-Head chips, we can actually also sell AI servers leveraging those chips to other computing centers, or we can co-build computing centers with others. There are different ways that we can get to where we need to get. The bottom line is that the demand for compute infrastructure is gonna be 10x of 2022's.

Eddie Wu

[Non-English content]

Speaker 12

In terms of our T-Head proprietary chips, they can be deployed across a very large part of our AI infrastructure, and not just compute chips, but, you know, we have a full stack including memory. At present, the ratio is still relatively low, and that's because of constraints around production capacity in China, which has been limited. Of course, it's been growing. As we deploy more and more of our own proprietary T-Head chips, the new chips will certainly contribute very, very significantly to gross margin expansion.

Speaker 12

It's true to say that domestically produced semiconductors in China lag behind the leading overseas ones in terms of energy efficiency and production efficiency. However, you know, if you look at globally leading AI chip vendors today, their gross margins are as high as 60% or even 80%. As we ramp up domestic chip production and the capabilities improve, I think there's a lot of room for our chips to be providing very high value for money as compared to that 60%-80% gross margin that other vendors are taking.

Lydia Liu

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's earnings call. We appreciate your time and participation, and we look forward to speaking with you soon.

Operator

Thank you. You may now disconnect your line.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-09

RealReal Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

MarketBeat

Interested in The RealReal, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. RealReal’s Q1 2026 results beat expectations, with GMV up 24% to $606 million and revenue up 19% to $190 million. Adjusted EBITDA rose to $13.1 million, reflecting strong margin expansion and improving operating efficiency. Management raised full-year guidance after the strong start to 2026, now targeting GMV of $2.42 billion to $2.47 billion and revenue of $770 million to $784 million. The updated outlook also calls for adjusted EBITDA of $59 million to $67 million, with continued progress toward medium-term margin goals. AI, automation, and supply expansion are central to the growth plan, including the Athena intake system, automated storage at its Perth Amboy center, and new supply channels such as stores, referrals, and international drop-ship partnerships. Executives said customer demand remains resilient despite macro concerns. Michael Burry's Alibaba Bet and the Broader Market Implications RealReal (NASDAQ:REAL) reported first-quarter 2026 results that exceeded its expectations, with management pointing to stronger buyer engagement, higher-value transactions and improving operating efficiency across the luxury resale platform. Chief Executive Officer and President Rati Levesque said the quarter marked the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit top-line growth and its third consecutive quarter of growth above 20%. She said trailing 12-month active buyers grew by double digits year over year, reflecting “higher levels of trust and an acceleration in engagement” with the platform. → Insider Sales: Top AST SpaceMobile Insider Cuts Postion Over 30% eBay Steps Aboard the AI Bandwagon with Certilogo Acquisition Levesque framed 2026 as a year of “compounding” for the company after what she described as stabilization in 2024 and optimization in 2025. She said RealReal has built a foundation in which customer relationships, data, brand and scale reinforce one another. Chief Financial Officer Ajay Gopal said first-quarter gross merchandise value rose 24% year over year to $606 million, while total revenue increased 19% to $190 million. On a two-year stacked basis, GMV was up 32%. → Light Speed Returns: Corning Cashes In on NVIDIA Growth Is This Why Mike Burry Took a Stake in The RealReal Stock? Consignment revenue grew 18% from the prior-year period, and direct revenue increased...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-05-08

Tencent Earnings Growth Seen Slowing As AI Investments Double

GuruFocus.com

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Tencent Holdings (TCEHY) and Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) are moving into earnings season with investors focused less on the AI headline and more on the cost of staying in the race. After DeepSeek's high-profile V4 model launch, China's artificial intelligence market appears to be entering a more expensive and competitive phase, where the biggest internet platforms may need to keep spending heavily just to defend their positions. That could make the next earnings updates a key test of how much AI investment pressure Tencent and Alibaba can absorb before investors start questioning the near-term payoff. Is TCEHY fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. For Tencent, Bloomberg Intelligence expects full-year earnings growth to slow into the low-teen percentage range as AI investments double. That does not mean the AI story is broken, but it could mean the earnings curve is becoming more complicated. Investors may now have to weigh Tencent's long-term AI positioning against a more immediate drag from higher spending, especially as competition in China's AI sector heats up. Alibaba faces its own pressure point, with China's soft consumption outlook weighing on the company's setup. Bloomberg Intelligence said Alibaba's richer valuation depends more on longer-dated, AI-driven monetization than near-term earnings delivery, which could leave the shares more exposed if investors do not see a clearer path from AI investment to future returns. The cloud story may not offer the simple earnings offset investors might have hoped for. Bloomberg Intelligence said rising cloud-computing demand is unlikely to deliver material upside to Tencent's or Alibaba's cloud earnings in 2026, with intense competition and margin pressure still limiting the benefit. That puts more attention on how both companies manage the balance between AI ambition and profitability, particularly as Tencent and Alibaba are also in talks to join DeepSeek's maiden funding round, according to a person familiar last month. For investors, the core issue is not whether China's AI race is gaining momentum. It is whether that momentum could translate into durable monetization fast enough to justify the rising cost of participation.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-04-24

Why Is Chewy (CHWY) Down 5% Since Last Earnings Report?

Zacks

It has been about a month since the last earnings report for Chewy (CHWY). Shares have lost about 5% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500. But investors have to be wondering, will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Chewy due for a breakout? Before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late, let's take a quick look at its latest earnings report in order to get a better handle on the important catalysts. Chewy reported solid fourth-quarter fiscal 2025 results, wherein the top line beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate and the bottom line missed the same. Also, sales increased and earnings declined year over year. Chewy posted adjusted earnings of 27 cents per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 28 cents. The figure decreased 3.6% from the prior-year period. The company reported net sales of $3,264.7 million, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3,256 million. The figure increased 0.5% from $3,247.4 million posted in the year-ago period, driven by strong execution, continued market share gains in a stable category environment and consistent performance across both customer growth and spend per customer. The Autoship subscription program remained a cornerstone of Chewy’s model. Autoship customer sales grew 4.8% to $2.74 billion, outpacing overall net sales growth. The metric represented 84% of total net sales, a record for the company and an increase from 80.6% in the prior-year period. The company ended the quarter with 21.3 million active customers, which reflected a 4% increase year over year, supported by continued improvement across customer acquisition, retention and engagement metrics. Chewy’s net sales per active customer reached $591, reflecting a 2.2% year-over-year increase, driven by improved customer engagement and higher spending per user. Chewy’s gross profit increased 3.6% year over year to $959.7 million from $926 million. The gross margin expanded 90 basis points (bps) to 29.4% compared with 28.5% in the year-ago quarter, driven by growth in sponsored ads, a favorable mix toward higher-margin categories and a rational promotional environment. SG&A expenses declined 2.3% year over year to $684.6 million from $700.7 million in the fiscal quarter. As a percentage of net sales, this metric declined 60 basis points year over year to 21%. Advertising and...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-03-21

Stocks to Watch After Blowout Earnings: Micron, FedEx & More

Zacks

Strong quarterly results from Micron Technology MU and FedEx FDX stood out as rare bright spots in an otherwise turbulent week, as broader equity indexes retreated sharply amid surging oil prices and heightened economic uncertainty stemming from the conflict in Iran. Neither were immune to the volatility in Friday’s trading session, but Micron and FedEx stock may serve as appealing buy-the-dip targets as they posted blowout quarterly earnings on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. Optimistically, there were a few other standouts that could potentially combat weaker market sentiment after impressively beating EPS expectations. Explosive demand for AI-related memory products has led to tight industry supply, allowing Micron to command higher prices and deliver stronger margins, with its stock currently boasting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Reporting results for its fiscal second quarter, Micron’s Q2 sales nearly tripled year over year to a record $23.86 billion from $8.05 billion in the comparative quarter. The surge was fueled by high demand for Micron’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products, which are used in Nvidia’s NVDA GPUs. More importantly, Micron continued to show strong execution, with Q2 EPS at $12.20, topping expectations of $8.80 by 38.64% and skyrocketing from $1.56 per share a year ago. Micron also produced record quarterly free cash flow of $6.9 billion and has efficiently scaled its next-generation memory production. With analysts seeing the current memory cycle as the strongest in years, Micron guided its Q3 sales at $33.5 billion, well ahead of expectations of $22.79 billion or 101% growth. Benefitting from a blazing trend of positive earnings estimate revisions, Micron is currently expected to post FY26 EPS of $36.18. More intriguing, analysts project Micron will pass $100 billion in annual sales next year, and FY27 EPS projections are at a whopping $54.78. FedEx’s results for its fiscal third quarter were exceptionally strong, beating expectations on revenue and earnings, while expanding margins in key segments, and raising its full-year outlook. This was driven by disciplined operations, strong package demand, and efficiency gains from the accelerating impact of its advanced digital solutions to help control costs and improve service quality. FedEx stock lands a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), but a buy rating could be on the way as earnings esti...

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-03-20

Alibaba Q3 Earnings Miss Estimates, Revenues Rise Y/Y

Zacks

Alibaba Group BABA reported non-GAAP diluted earnings of $1.01 per ADS in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 47.12%. In domestic currency, the company reported non-GAAP diluted earnings of RMB 7.09, down 67% year over year. It posted third-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues of $40.7 billion. The top line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.95%. In domestic currency, revenues of RMB 284.8 billion increased 2% year over year. Excluding disposed businesses of Sun Art and Intime, revenues increased 9% on a like-for-like basis. The revenue growth was driven by accelerated performance in Cloud Intelligence Group and continued expansion of the quick commerce business, while aggressive investments in user experience, technology and quick commerce significantly pressured margins. The company continues focusing on two strategic pillars: consumption and AI + Cloud. Alibaba Group Holding Limited price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Alibaba Group Holding Limited Quote Alibaba China E-commerce Group (55.9% of Total Revenues): Alibaba generated RMB 159.3 billion ($22.8 billion) of revenues from the segment, which increased 6% from the year-ago quarter. Customer management revenues grew 1% year over year, driven primarily by an improvement in take rate. During the quarter, the company rebranded "Ele.me" to "Taobao Instant Commerce" to closely align it with the Taobao app and strengthen brand identity. The Taobao app achieved a double-digit year-over-year increase in monthly active consumers during the quarter. The number of 88VIP members, BABA's highest-spending consumer group, continued to increase by double digits year over year, surpassing 59 million, demonstrating strong platform momentum to attract and retain a high-spending and loyal consumer base. E-commerce Business (82.6% of China E-commerce Revenues): The core e-commerce vertical generated revenues of RMB 131.6 billion ($18.8 billion), reflecting a 1% increase from the year-ago quarter. Quick Commerce (13.1% of China E-commerce Revenues): The quick commerce business generated revenues of RMB 20.8 billion ($3 billion), which grew 56% year over year, driven by order growth from the expanded rollout of "Taobao Instant Commerce." The business continued to improve unit economics and increase average order value month over month during the quarter, driven by fulfillment logisti...

As of 2026-05-30 • Updated weeklySource: Earnings sourceIngestion runbook