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Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-10-12Alibaba Stock Jumps as BofA Hikes Price Target Ahead of Earnings
GuruFocus.com
Alibaba Stock Jumps as BofA Hikes Price Target Ahead of Earnings
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) is drawing higher valuation expectations from Bank of America ahead of its September-quarter results, as the brokerage sees cloud expansion and cost discipline supporting earnings. The bank kept its Buy recommendation, raising its U.S. price target to $178 from $175 and its Hong Kong target to HK$175 from HK$172. - Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Sign with BABA. - Is BABA fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. BofA projects September-quarter revenue to increase 10% year over year and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and amortization (EBITA) to reach 30 billion yuan, above the 26 billion yuan consensus. It expects cloud revenue growth to accelerate to 52% from 45% in the prior quarter, with the unit's adjusted EBITA margin expanding to 12.9% from 11.6%. Pressure in online retail remains a concern. BofA forecasts customer-management revenue to decline 5%, but expects e-commerce adjusted EBITA to rise 2% as efficiency measures and lower quick-commerce losses offset weaker demand. It also expects AI-related losses to narrow to 11 billion yuan from 14 billion yuan. Alibaba is expected to report results between late October and mid-November. Hong Kong-listed shares climbed nearly 3% in Monday morning trading.
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-10-11Alibaba Burned RMB 44.7 Billion of Free Cash Flow in the June Quarter. Here’s Management’s 33% Growth Math
TIKR
Alibaba Burned RMB 44.7 Billion of Free Cash Flow in the June Quarter. Here’s Management’s 33% Growth Math
- Current Price: $111.37 - Target Price (Mid): ~$231 - Street Target: ~$186 - Potential Total Return: ~108% - Annualized IRR: ~18% / year Alibaba (BABA) reported a free cash flow outflow of RMB 44.7 billion in the June quarter. Its August 20 earnings call offered a rough rule for when AI spending pays for itself. Speaking through an interpreter, management said AI growth below 33% would theoretically produce positive cash flow. That assumes current AI gross margins and a three-year payback. Management said it chose to grow faster. Shares closed at $111.37 on October 9, up 5.36%, but remain down 24% in 2026. Details are in Alibaba's investor relations materials. Capital expenditure was RMB 67.6 billion on TIKR's basis, against the operating cash flow of RMB 22.9 billion. The company-reported outflow compares with RMB 18.8 billion a year earlier. CFO Toby Xu gave three reasons for the capex jump: procurement-cycle timing, added CPU capacity for expected AI-agent demand, and higher chip prices. Management cautioned against multiplying one quarter by four. The case for the spending rests on payback. Xu said: "Our servers equipped with chips typically reach breakeven within 3 years." Management said payback could shorten to 2.5 years as T-Head chips replace purchased ones. It called growing above 40% with positive cash flow its long-term direction. It also said more than 500,000 last-generation T-Head chips have already shipped. That makes payback, not the size of the outflow, the number to track. This is a framework from the call. Part of the October 9 gain was sector-wide. U.S.-listed Chinese stocks rose on speculation that Chinese authorities curbed sell orders during Asian trading. The same day, BofA's Joyce Ju raised her target to $178 from $175. She also lifted fiscal 2027 to 2029 earnings estimates by 3% to 9%. Her target still sits below the Street mean of around $186. Morgan Stanley's Gary Yu expects September-quarter external cloud revenue to grow around 55%, up from 45%. He sees the cloud margin rising to around 13.5% from 11.6%. Management points in the same direction. On August 20, CEO Eddie Wu said that, based on current market feedback and contract pipelines, "compute demand will continue to outstrip supply." Through the interpreter, executives said annualized AI-related product revenue of about $7.3 billion should approach $10 billion in the Septe…Read full documentShow less
- Current Price: $111.37 - Target Price (Mid): ~$231 - Street Target: ~$186 - Potential Total Return: ~108% - Annualized IRR: ~18% / year Alibaba (BABA) reported a free cash flow outflow of RMB 44.7 billion in the June quarter. Its August 20 earnings call offered a rough rule for when AI spending pays for itself. Speaking through an interpreter, management said AI growth below 33% would theoretically produce positive cash flow. That assumes current AI gross margins and a three-year payback. Management said it chose to grow faster. Shares closed at $111.37 on October 9, up 5.36%, but remain down 24% in 2026. Details are in Alibaba's investor relations materials. Capital expenditure was RMB 67.6 billion on TIKR's basis, against the operating cash flow of RMB 22.9 billion. The company-reported outflow compares with RMB 18.8 billion a year earlier. CFO Toby Xu gave three reasons for the capex jump: procurement-cycle timing, added CPU capacity for expected AI-agent demand, and higher chip prices. Management cautioned against multiplying one quarter by four. The case for the spending rests on payback. Xu said: "Our servers equipped with chips typically reach breakeven within 3 years." Management said payback could shorten to 2.5 years as T-Head chips replace purchased ones. It called growing above 40% with positive cash flow its long-term direction. It also said more than 500,000 last-generation T-Head chips have already shipped. That makes payback, not the size of the outflow, the number to track. This is a framework from the call. Part of the October 9 gain was sector-wide. U.S.-listed Chinese stocks rose on speculation that Chinese authorities curbed sell orders during Asian trading. The same day, BofA's Joyce Ju raised her target to $178 from $175. She also lifted fiscal 2027 to 2029 earnings estimates by 3% to 9%. Her target still sits below the Street mean of around $186. Morgan Stanley's Gary Yu expects September-quarter external cloud revenue to grow around 55%, up from 45%. He sees the cloud margin rising to around 13.5% from 11.6%. Management points in the same direction. On August 20, CEO Eddie Wu said that, based on current market feedback and contract pipelines, "compute demand will continue to outstrip supply." Through the interpreter, executives said annualized AI-related product revenue of about $7.3 billion should approach $10 billion in the September quarter. The market pays less for that growth than it did a year ago. Alibaba trades at around 14 times NTM normalized earnings, versus around 22 times on September 30, 2025. Consensus still has free cash flow negative in fiscal 2027 (ending March 31, 2027) and positive in fiscal 2028. - Current Price: $111.37 - Target Price (Mid): ~$231 - Potential Total Return: ~108% - Annualized IRR: ~18% / year - Consensus Revenue: RMB 1,023.67 billion (fiscal 2026) to ~RMB 1.82 trillion (fiscal 2031) - Consensus Normalized Net Margin: 6.3% (fiscal 2026) to ~12% (fiscal 2031) The mid case is the central scenario. For context, TIKR consensus has revenue growing about 12% a year through fiscal 2031, with a margin recovery, though only four analysts forecast that year. The main risk is payback staying near three years while capex climbs, which would push positive free cash flow past fiscal 2028. Upside comes if the T-Head substitution shortens payback to 2.5 years. The downside comes if cloud growth stalls near 45%. The September-quarter report is the test. It is expected around November 24, but Alibaba hasn't confirmed the date. External cloud growth near 55%, with a margin above 11.6%, would show the spending buying growth on schedule. Any change to the three-year payback matters as much. A shorter payback makes the burn look chosen; a longer one makes it look like a cost. TIKR lets you forecast the future price of any stock in less than a minute. Just enter a few assumptions into TIKR's valuation model and see what Alibaba could be worth. Start from Wall Street consensus estimates, or adjust the inputs to reflect your own view of the business. It's free to use. Analyze Alibaba on TIKR Free →
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-10-09Alibaba's Earnings Turn May Be Underpriced
GuruFocus.com
Alibaba's Earnings Turn May Be Underpriced
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Alibaba (BABA, Financials), the Chinese e-commerce and cloud giant, jumped 4.5% Friday after Bank of America said investors were still underestimating an upcoming profit increase. - Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Sign with BABA. - Is BABA fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. The bank raised its price objective on the stock to $178 from $175 and maintained its Buy rating. That objective implies an upside of approximately 68% from Thursday's close of $105.70. But more significantly, what may happen within Alibaba's cloud and AI businesses is also important. Bank of America forecasts cloud revenue to climb 52% in the September quarter, compared with 45% earlier. Cloud margins are forecast to rise to 12.9% from 11.6%. While losses from Alibaba's AI laboratories and apps may shrink to 11 billion yuan from 14 billion yuan, this could affect the earnings equation. That combo might potentially affect the earnings equation. The bank anticipates the cloud gains to offset AI losses by the December quarter and foresees the combined companies becoming breakeven in the second half of fiscal 2027. Alibaba's conventional e-commerce business is still a counterbalance. Chinese consumer spending is weak, and customer management revenue is likely to fall 5% in the September quarter. The challenge for investors is whether increasing cloud revenues can grow big enough to offset those consumer constraints. Next quarter's results should be the next indicator of whether Alibaba's pricey AI investment cycle is starting to provide considerable operational leverage.
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-09-30Alibaba Stock Is Down Nearly 27% in 2026 as Earnings Keep Missing Estimates. Here’s What the Next Report Has to Show
TIKR
Alibaba Stock Is Down Nearly 27% in 2026 as Earnings Keep Missing Estimates. Here’s What the Next Report Has to Show
- Current Price: $107.74 - Target Price (Mid): ~$216 - Street Target: ~$185 - Potential Total Return: ~101% - Annualized IRR: ~17% / year Alibaba (BABA) has missed consensus adjusted EPS in each of its last five reports, and analysts have trimmed the current fiscal year's revenue forecast. TIKR's consensus for fiscal 2027 (ending March 2027) revenue has slipped about 2.5% since March 31, from around RMB 1.15 trillion to around RMB 1.12 trillion, with 44 analysts now versus 48 then. Shares closed at $107.74 on September 29, down 14.1% since March 31 and 26.5% in 2026. Alibaba's investor relations materials point to technology investment as the main drag on profit, while customer management revenue barely grew on an adjusted basis. The June quarter, reported August 20, shows the pattern. Adjusted EPS of RMB 8.52 per ADS missed consensus by about 21%, and TIKR-basis EBITDA fell 14.41% year over year even as it beat estimates by 6.59%. CFO Toby Xu attributed the decline in the company's own adjusted EBITDA primarily to investment in technology. In the e-commerce group, revenue rose 4% to RMB 205.9 billion, and quick commerce revenue grew 45% to RMB 53.3 billion, but customer management revenue fell 7%. Xu added, "Excluding the contra revenue impact from the new business development program, customer management revenue would have grown by 1% year-over-year." E-commerce adjusted EBITDA held relatively stable at RMB 39.7 billion, so the e-commerce group is not growing its profit fast enough to absorb the technology spending on its own. On TIKR's basis, consensus expects September-quarter EBITDA of around RMB 40 billion, up roughly 129% from RMB 17.26 billion a year earlier, though only eight analysts contribute. Adjusted EPS is expected at around RMB 11 per ADS. Xu said the AI Labs and Applications segment's RMB 13.9 billion adjusted EBITDA loss should narrow as model training and Qwen app marketing become more efficient. TIKR's next-twelve-month levered free cash flow estimate moved from around RMB 48 billion on June 30 to around negative RMB 16 billion on September 29. On an annual basis, the Street does not see positive free cash flow until fiscal 2028. The August placement of 710 million new shares, about 3.7% of the share count, also spreads future earnings across more stock. On September 27, The Information reported that China's industry ministry asked compan…Read full documentShow less
- Current Price: $107.74 - Target Price (Mid): ~$216 - Street Target: ~$185 - Potential Total Return: ~101% - Annualized IRR: ~17% / year Alibaba (BABA) has missed consensus adjusted EPS in each of its last five reports, and analysts have trimmed the current fiscal year's revenue forecast. TIKR's consensus for fiscal 2027 (ending March 2027) revenue has slipped about 2.5% since March 31, from around RMB 1.15 trillion to around RMB 1.12 trillion, with 44 analysts now versus 48 then. Shares closed at $107.74 on September 29, down 14.1% since March 31 and 26.5% in 2026. Alibaba's investor relations materials point to technology investment as the main drag on profit, while customer management revenue barely grew on an adjusted basis. The June quarter, reported August 20, shows the pattern. Adjusted EPS of RMB 8.52 per ADS missed consensus by about 21%, and TIKR-basis EBITDA fell 14.41% year over year even as it beat estimates by 6.59%. CFO Toby Xu attributed the decline in the company's own adjusted EBITDA primarily to investment in technology. In the e-commerce group, revenue rose 4% to RMB 205.9 billion, and quick commerce revenue grew 45% to RMB 53.3 billion, but customer management revenue fell 7%. Xu added, "Excluding the contra revenue impact from the new business development program, customer management revenue would have grown by 1% year-over-year." E-commerce adjusted EBITDA held relatively stable at RMB 39.7 billion, so the e-commerce group is not growing its profit fast enough to absorb the technology spending on its own. On TIKR's basis, consensus expects September-quarter EBITDA of around RMB 40 billion, up roughly 129% from RMB 17.26 billion a year earlier, though only eight analysts contribute. Adjusted EPS is expected at around RMB 11 per ADS. Xu said the AI Labs and Applications segment's RMB 13.9 billion adjusted EBITDA loss should narrow as model training and Qwen app marketing become more efficient. TIKR's next-twelve-month levered free cash flow estimate moved from around RMB 48 billion on June 30 to around negative RMB 16 billion on September 29. On an annual basis, the Street does not see positive free cash flow until fiscal 2028. The August placement of 710 million new shares, about 3.7% of the share count, also spreads future earnings across more stock. On September 27, The Information reported that China's industry ministry asked companies, including Alibaba and ByteDance, for plans to buy Nvidia (NVDA) RTX Pro 5500 chips, built for high-end professional computers. The ministry told some firms it intends to approve the purchases, but that is a reported plan, not an approval, and the chip's U.S. export status has not been confirmed. CFO Toby Xu sold about $1.41 million of stock on September 29, according to an SEC filing reported by Benzinga, which gives no reason for the sale. In August, Chairman Joe Tsai and CEO Eddie Wu bought a combined HK 120million (US15.3 million) of shares on the open market. - Current Price: $107.74 - Target Price (Mid): ~$216 - Potential Total Return: ~101% - Annualized IRR: ~17% / year The TIKR model's mid-case, used as the central scenario, values Alibaba at around $216 by March 31, 2031. That is roughly 101% above $107.74, or about 17% a year. For context, TIKR consensus has normalized EPS rising from around RMB 44 per ADS in fiscal 2027 to around RMB 79 in fiscal 2029 before dipping to around RMB 64 in fiscal 2030, and revenue estimates beyond fiscal 2029 come from only four analysts. The primary risk is that the revenue trims now visible in fiscal 2027 spread to later years, since the miss streak shows estimates running ahead of results. Upside comes if the September quarter ends that streak. The downside comes from further misses or an adverse turn in the pending securities class action, whose allegations are unproven. The September-quarter report is the next test; Alibaba reported the same quarter on November 25 last year. Adjusted EPS at or above the roughly RMB 11 per ADS consensus would end the five-report miss streak. A sixth miss, alongside further trims to fiscal 2027 revenue estimates, would suggest the stock's 2026 decline reflects earnings arriving later than analysts expect. TIKR lets you forecast the future price of any stock in less than a minute. Just enter a few assumptions into TIKR's valuation model and see what Alibaba could be worth. Start from Wall Street consensus estimates, or adjust the inputs to reflect your own view of the business. It's free to use. Search 100K+ global stocks, global top investor holdings, and more with TIKR.
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-09-25Alibaba Group vs. Uber Technologies: Examining Quarterly Revenue Trends
Motley Fool
Alibaba Group vs. Uber Technologies: Examining Quarterly Revenue Trends
Alibaba Group Holding (NYSE:BABA) primarily earns revenue by operating extensive online e-commerce retail distribution networks, providing comprehensive cloud computing technology capabilities, facilitating complex international logistics solutions, and managing digital media entertainment services for global enterprises and consumers. It recently completed a $10.2 billion ordinary share placement intended to fund advanced computing infrastructure, while concurrently navigating newly filed securities fraud class action lawsuits concerning specific government regulatory designations during the period. Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) primarily generates revenue by operating an expansive global digital application ecosystem that directly connects smartphone consumers worldwide with a diverse variety of independent transportation, ride-hailing, and local retail delivery service providers. It formally published a comprehensive statutory offer document to acquire all outstanding shares in Delivery Hero, and it simultaneously launched a new autonomous ride-hailing service across multiple European testing markets alongside regional partners. Revenue measures total gross sales to indicate overall enterprise scale before deducting typical operating expenses. This metric serves as a fundamental baseline indication of overall consumer demand and business growth. Calendar quarter | Alibaba Group Holding Revenue | Uber Technologies Revenue Q3 2024 | $33.0 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2024) | $11.2 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2024) Q4 2024 | $38.9 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2024) | $12.0 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2024) Q1 2025 | $32.5 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2025) | $11.5 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2025) Q2 2025 | $34.2 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2025) | $12.7 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2025) Q3 2025 | $34.6 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2025) | $13.5 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2025) Q4 2025 | $40.2 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2025) | $14.4 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2025) Q1 2026 | $35.1 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2026) | $13.2 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2026) Q2 2026 | $39.6 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2026) | $14.2 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2026) Data source: Financial Modeling Prep. Alibaba Group Holding's figures are converted from Chinese yuan to U.S. dollars. Data as of Sept. 21, 2026…Read full documentShow less
Alibaba Group Holding (NYSE:BABA) primarily earns revenue by operating extensive online e-commerce retail distribution networks, providing comprehensive cloud computing technology capabilities, facilitating complex international logistics solutions, and managing digital media entertainment services for global enterprises and consumers. It recently completed a $10.2 billion ordinary share placement intended to fund advanced computing infrastructure, while concurrently navigating newly filed securities fraud class action lawsuits concerning specific government regulatory designations during the period. Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) primarily generates revenue by operating an expansive global digital application ecosystem that directly connects smartphone consumers worldwide with a diverse variety of independent transportation, ride-hailing, and local retail delivery service providers. It formally published a comprehensive statutory offer document to acquire all outstanding shares in Delivery Hero, and it simultaneously launched a new autonomous ride-hailing service across multiple European testing markets alongside regional partners. Revenue measures total gross sales to indicate overall enterprise scale before deducting typical operating expenses. This metric serves as a fundamental baseline indication of overall consumer demand and business growth. Calendar quarter | Alibaba Group Holding Revenue | Uber Technologies Revenue Q3 2024 | $33.0 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2024) | $11.2 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2024) Q4 2024 | $38.9 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2024) | $12.0 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2024) Q1 2025 | $32.5 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2025) | $11.5 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2025) Q2 2025 | $34.2 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2025) | $12.7 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2025) Q3 2025 | $34.6 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2025) | $13.5 billion (quarter ended Sept. 30, 2025) Q4 2025 | $40.2 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2025) | $14.4 billion (quarter ended Dec. 31, 2025) Q1 2026 | $35.1 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2026) | $13.2 billion (quarter ended March 31, 2026) Q2 2026 | $39.6 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2026) | $14.2 billion (quarter ended June 30, 2026) Data source: Financial Modeling Prep. Alibaba Group Holding's figures are converted from Chinese yuan to U.S. dollars. Data as of Sept. 21, 2026. Alibaba and Uber are two technology companies experiencing a seismic shift in their businesses due to the artificial intelligence boom. The former maintains steady year-over-year sales growth, but its bottom line is being impacted by the capital expenditures needed to build out its AI infrastructure. For instance, its second-quarter revenue of $39.6 billion represented a 9% increase over 2025, yet its net income dropped 75% to $1.5 billion. This trade-off makes sense. While Alibaba's mature e-commerce business delivered 4% year-over-year growth in Q2 sales, its AI cloud and compute division experienced an impressive 45% revenue increase compared to 2025. Tracking the Chinese conglomerate's sales in the subsequent quarters will prove essential to understanding the ongoing success of its AI operations. Uber has established partnerships around the world to support the rise of autonomous vehicles (AVs). On Sept. 3, the company and its AV partner Wayve launched the first self-driving car rides in London. As it sets up its AI-powered future through AVs, Uber's human-based delivery services business continues to grow at a much faster pace than Alibaba's core e-commerce operations. The ride-hailing company's $14.2 billion in Q2 sales represented 12% year-over-year growth. Before you buy stock in Alibaba Group, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Alibaba Group wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $386,781!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,379,943!* That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by 4x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of September 25, 2026. Robert Izquierdo has positions in Alibaba Group and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Alibaba Group vs. Uber Technologies: Examining Quarterly Revenue Trends was originally published by The Motley Fool
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-09-22Top Midday Stories: Goldman Reportedly in Talks to Acquire $37 Billion Credit Firm Palmer Square; Viking Obesity Drug Candidate Showed 'Superior' Results in Study
MT Newswires
Top Midday Stories: Goldman Reportedly in Talks to Acquire $37 Billion Credit Firm Palmer Square; Viking Obesity Drug Candidate Showed 'Superior' Results in Study
The Nasdaq Composite was up, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down, and the S&P 500 Index was ro
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-09-20Alibaba Burned RMB 44.73 Billion in Free Cash Flow Last Quarter. The Numbers Tell a Messier Story.
TIKR
Alibaba Burned RMB 44.73 Billion in Free Cash Flow Last Quarter. The Numbers Tell a Messier Story.
Alibaba’s Cloud and AI segment grew revenue 45% year over year last quarter, a 22-quarter high, with AI product revenue on a $7.3 billion annualized run rate after 12 straight quarters of triple-digit growth. Alibaba’s group-wide EBITDA margin was 11.93% last quarter, down from 17.24% a year earlier and roughly half the 20%-plus margins the company posted through early last fiscal year. Free cash flow was negative RMB 44.73 billion last quarter, worse than the RMB 18 billion outflow a year ago, even as capital spending hit RMB 67.7 billion. Management says AI infrastructure now pays back in about three years, shrinking toward 2.5, a claim the consolidated numbers have not yet confirmed. On the Q1 2027 earnings call, Alibaba (BABA) reported Cloud external revenue growth accelerating to 45%, a 22-quarter high, with segment adjusted EBITDA margin reaching roughly 12%. AI-related products generated RMB 12.4 billion in revenue, an annualized run rate of RMB 49.5 billion, or about $7.3 billion, marking a 12th straight quarter of triple-digit growth. Management pointed to proprietary T-Head chips now deployed across more than 650 customers, and to Model-as-a-Service revenue already past RMB 16 billion annualized, targeting RMB 30 billion by year end. Executives reiterated a goal of $100 billion in external cloud revenue by 2030. On Cloud’s own numbers, the AI investment cycle looks like it is starting to pay off. That segment story does not show up yet at the consolidated level. Alibaba’s group EBITDA margin has been roughly cut in half over the past year, falling from 20% to 21% in the quarters spanning late 2024 through early 2025 to a range of 7% to 12% in every quarter since, including 11.93% last quarter versus 17.24% a year earlier. The gap traces to where the AI spending lands. Alibaba’s AI Labs and Applications segment, home to the Qwen consumer app, posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of RMB 13.9 billion on inference costs and marketing, even as the loss narrowed sequentially. E-commerce Group EBITDA held roughly flat at RMB 39.7 billion despite heavier quick commerce investment, and GAAP net income fell 75% to RMB 10.4 billion, partly on lower equity-investment gains. Cloud is genuinely improving. The rest of the group is absorbing the cost of getting it there. Free cash flow has been negative in six of the past eight quarters, swinging from a RMB 39 billion i…Read full documentShow less
Alibaba’s Cloud and AI segment grew revenue 45% year over year last quarter, a 22-quarter high, with AI product revenue on a $7.3 billion annualized run rate after 12 straight quarters of triple-digit growth. Alibaba’s group-wide EBITDA margin was 11.93% last quarter, down from 17.24% a year earlier and roughly half the 20%-plus margins the company posted through early last fiscal year. Free cash flow was negative RMB 44.73 billion last quarter, worse than the RMB 18 billion outflow a year ago, even as capital spending hit RMB 67.7 billion. Management says AI infrastructure now pays back in about three years, shrinking toward 2.5, a claim the consolidated numbers have not yet confirmed. On the Q1 2027 earnings call, Alibaba (BABA) reported Cloud external revenue growth accelerating to 45%, a 22-quarter high, with segment adjusted EBITDA margin reaching roughly 12%. AI-related products generated RMB 12.4 billion in revenue, an annualized run rate of RMB 49.5 billion, or about $7.3 billion, marking a 12th straight quarter of triple-digit growth. Management pointed to proprietary T-Head chips now deployed across more than 650 customers, and to Model-as-a-Service revenue already past RMB 16 billion annualized, targeting RMB 30 billion by year end. Executives reiterated a goal of $100 billion in external cloud revenue by 2030. On Cloud’s own numbers, the AI investment cycle looks like it is starting to pay off. That segment story does not show up yet at the consolidated level. Alibaba’s group EBITDA margin has been roughly cut in half over the past year, falling from 20% to 21% in the quarters spanning late 2024 through early 2025 to a range of 7% to 12% in every quarter since, including 11.93% last quarter versus 17.24% a year earlier. The gap traces to where the AI spending lands. Alibaba’s AI Labs and Applications segment, home to the Qwen consumer app, posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of RMB 13.9 billion on inference costs and marketing, even as the loss narrowed sequentially. E-commerce Group EBITDA held roughly flat at RMB 39.7 billion despite heavier quick commerce investment, and GAAP net income fell 75% to RMB 10.4 billion, partly on lower equity-investment gains. Cloud is genuinely improving. The rest of the group is absorbing the cost of getting it there. Free cash flow has been negative in six of the past eight quarters, swinging from a RMB 39 billion inflow in late 2024 to a RMB 116.65 billion outflow this past March. Last quarter’s outflow narrowed sequentially to RMB 44.73 billion, still more than double the RMB 18 billion shortfall a year earlier. Capital expenditure of RMB 67.7 billion drove the gap, part of a three-year, RMB 380 billion infrastructure plan with RMB 190 billion spent so far. Management blames this quarter’s size on lumpy hardware delivery cycles and rising CPU procurement for AI agents, and argues AI assets now break even in roughly three years, shortening toward 2.5 as proprietary chips replace commercial GPUs. That timeline is still a forecast, not a result the cash flow trend has confirmed. The clearest evidence for the bull case is Cloud’s own growth and margin trajectory, improving for nine straight quarters with no sign of decelerating. The clearest evidence against a quick verdict is that this improvement has not reached the consolidated income statement or cash flow statement, both still weaker than a year ago. That gap is not automatically a red flag: Alibaba is intentionally running AI Labs and quick commerce at a loss while Cloud scales, and management has said near-term cash flow will stay negative through this capex cycle. But the payback claim remains unproven at the group level. Investors should watch two things next quarter: whether group EBITDA margin keeps recovering toward Cloud’s own segment margin, and whether free cash flow narrows again rather than swinging back toward March’s outflow. A second straight improvement in both would start to validate management’s 2.5-to-3-year timeline. A reversal would suggest the AI cycle is further from self-funding than the Cloud numbers alone suggest, a risk that regulatory scrutiny of Alibaba’s other China businesses would only complicate. The only way to really know is to look at the numbers yourself. TIKR gives you free access to the same institutional-quality financial data that professional analysts use to answer exactly that question. Pull up BABA stock and you’ll see years of historical financials, what Wall Street analysts expect for revenue and earnings in the quarters ahead, how valuation multiples have moved over time, and whether price targets are trending up or down. You can build a free watchlist to track Alibaba Group Holding Limited alongside every other stock on your radar. No credit card required. Just the data you need to decide for yourself.
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-08-28Alibaba (BABA) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript
Motley Fool
Alibaba (BABA) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript
Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026 at 7:30 a.m. ET Chairman - Joe Tsai Chief Executive Officer - Eddie Wu Chief Financial Officer - Toby Xu Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba E-commerce Business Group - Jiang Fan Head of Investor Relations - Lydia Lu Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Alibaba Group's June Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the call over to Lydia Lu, Head of Investor Relations of Alibaba Group. Please go ahead. Lydia Lu: Thank you. Good day, everyone, and welcome to Alibaba Group's June Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining the call today 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. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements based on management's current expectations that are subject to risks and uncertainties. We also make reference to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in today's earnings press release and investor presentation. Our comments will be on year-over-year comparisons unless we state otherwise. A replay of the call will be available on our website later today. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Eddie. Yongming Wu: Good evening, good morning, and welcome to Alibaba Group's Earnings Call for the First Quarter of Fiscal Year 2027. Over the past quarter, Alibaba's strategic AI investments have translated into robust results with a total group revenue growing 9% year-over-year. AI commercialization has also accelerated across the board. Alibaba Cloud's external revenue grew 45% and EBITDA increased 133% year-over-year, continuing to deliver on our commitment to accelerate growth. Revenue from AI-related products has maintained a triple-digit growth for the 12th consecutive quarter with annual revenue run rate surpassing RMB 49.5 billion around USD 7.3 billion. It is the core engine of Alibaba's Cloud's growth acceleration. I'll now walk you through 4 key areas: AI and cloud commercialization, full-stack AI capabilities, AI application ecosystem and consumption business. First, AI and cloud commercialization accelerated across the board and is expected…Read full documentShow less
Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026 at 7:30 a.m. ET Chairman - Joe Tsai Chief Executive Officer - Eddie Wu Chief Financial Officer - Toby Xu Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba E-commerce Business Group - Jiang Fan Head of Investor Relations - Lydia Lu Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Alibaba Group's June Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the call over to Lydia Lu, Head of Investor Relations of Alibaba Group. Please go ahead. Lydia Lu: Thank you. Good day, everyone, and welcome to Alibaba Group's June Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining the call today 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. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements based on management's current expectations that are subject to risks and uncertainties. We also make reference to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in today's earnings press release and investor presentation. Our comments will be on year-over-year comparisons unless we state otherwise. A replay of the call will be available on our website later today. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Eddie. Yongming Wu: Good evening, good morning, and welcome to Alibaba Group's Earnings Call for the First Quarter of Fiscal Year 2027. Over the past quarter, Alibaba's strategic AI investments have translated into robust results with a total group revenue growing 9% year-over-year. AI commercialization has also accelerated across the board. Alibaba Cloud's external revenue grew 45% and EBITDA increased 133% year-over-year, continuing to deliver on our commitment to accelerate growth. Revenue from AI-related products has maintained a triple-digit growth for the 12th consecutive quarter with annual revenue run rate surpassing RMB 49.5 billion around USD 7.3 billion. It is the core engine of Alibaba's Cloud's growth acceleration. I'll now walk you through 4 key areas: AI and cloud commercialization, full-stack AI capabilities, AI application ecosystem and consumption business. First, AI and cloud commercialization accelerated across the board and is expected to sustain high growth going forward. This quarter, Alibaba Cloud's external revenue growth accelerated to 45%, a 22 quarter high, while adjusted EBITDA margin reached 11.6%. Notably, this 45% growth was broad-based driven by compute storage Model as a Service, MaaS, and AI applications. We proactively scaled back low-margin business continuing to improve the quality of our growth. This quarter, annual revenue run rate from AI-related products exceeded RMB 49.5 billion and its share of Alibaba Cloud's external revenue rose to 35%. AI-related products generate significantly higher gross margins than the average cloud portfolio. Our recurring AI-related product revenue spans multiple layers, AI compute, MaaS and AI applications. This multilayered mix of AI revenue sources and monetization models means growing customer demand at any layer converts directly into commercial opportunity for us. This structural advantage will underpin sustained rapid growth in recurring AI-related product revenue going forward. The surge in AI agents directly drives demand for tokens and GPU compute while also significantly boosting demand for our traditional cloud products across CPU compute, storage, databases and networking. Alibaba Cloud is undergoing a comprehensive upgrade to an agentic cloud. Based on the latest data, the ARR of our model and application services, including MaaS, has surpassed RMB 16 billion. Based on current market feedback and our contract pipelines, compute demand will continue to outstrip supply. As we continue to ramp up our supply, our AI and cloud revenue growth will accelerate further in the coming quarters, alongside continued improvement in profitability. Second, our full stack AI capabilities continue to strengthen, marked by the scaled commercialization of proprietary chips, faster model iteration and a thriving open source ecosystem. This quarter, deepening synergy between proprietary T-Head chips and proprietary foundation models further improved our AI commercialization efficiency. T-Head has established a full stack proprietary silicon portfolio, spanning GPU, CPU and networking chips. As of early August, the Zhenwu chips have served more than 650 customers on Alibaba Cloud. The supernode instance powered by T-Head's next-generation Zhenwu M890 AI processor recently launched on Alibaba Cloud at commercial scale. We expect supply to continue ramping up in the second half of the year to meet strong customer demand. Alibaba Cloud's Zhenwu M890 supernode can efficiently run inference workload for foundation models with more than 2 trillion parameters, both Kimi K3 and Qwen 3.8 Max are already using it to provide MaaS services to external customers. At the data center layer, Alibaba Cloud has cut the delivery time for hyperscale AI data centers to 100 days, a world-leading pace that will significantly speed up our global compute infrastructure build-out. At the model layer, our model release cadence has intensified over the past months with major iterations across our large language, image, audio, video and music models, all ranking among the world's top tier. Last week, we opened the modeled weights of Qwen 3.8 Max with 2.4 trillion parameters and the Qwen 3.8-27B model series. To date, the Qwen model series has been downloaded more than 3 billion times globally with more than 300,000 derivative models built on it. We believe a thriving open source model ecosystem drives greater demand for our cloud computing services creating a virtual cycle. Third, our AI native applications span both enterprise and consumer use cases driving rapid growth in token consumption. On the enterprise side, we launched QwenWork, a new AI productivity product built for enterprise workforce scenarios, delivering agent capabilities at scale. We expect productivity agents to become another engine of ARR growth. On the consumer side, the Qwen app continued to steadily grow its user base and is expanding the range of its value-added offerings. Through close coordination between Alibaba Token Hub and Alibaba Cloud, we're running a highly efficient commercial flywheel across compute models, tokens applications and monetization. Fourth, our e-commerce businesses remained solid this quarter. In quick commerce, we continued to narrow losses substantially while growing business scale by 45% with unit economics improving quarter-over-quarter. Having crossed the AI commercialization inflection point last quarter, we're now seeing growth accelerate and margins expand this quarter. Our AI businesses own capacity to self-fund and sustain itself is strengthening giving us greater confidence to keep investing. Looking ahead, AI has become Alibaba's most certain growth engine, we will stay strategically disciplined and drive long-term growth through our full stack AI capabilities. I'll now hand over to Toby to walk you through our financial results. Thank you. Toby Xu: Thank you, Eddie. Our strategic priorities in AI + Cloud and consumption businesses backed by disciplined investments delivered strong results this quarter. Cloud segment revenue growth further accelerated to 45% with its EBITDA margin sequentially rising to 12%. AI-related product revenue continued to drive this momentum marking the 12th consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth and accounting for 35% of external cloud revenue. The strong performance demonstrates growing customer adoption of our full stack AI capabilities, spanning AI agents, models, cloud infrastructure and preparatory chips as well as our enhanced scale efficiencies and the robust pricing power in a supply-constrained market. On consumption, Taobao Instant Commerce continued to improve its unit economics while maintaining market share. Overall e-commerce EBITDA remained relatively stable year-over-year. To realize synergies across our commerce platforms and strengthen our full stack AI capabilities, we have implemented strategic realignment of certain businesses in our financial reporting. Starting from this quarter, our segment reporting will present the following: first, Alibaba E-commerce Group; second, AI Cloud and Compute Services; third, AI Labs and Applications; and number four, all others. Now let's look at the financial results for this quarter. Total revenue increased 9% year-over-year to RMB 269 billion, driven by the strong momentum in cloud business and quick commerce. Total adjusted EBITDA decreased 30% to RMB 27.3 billion, primarily attributable to the investment in technology, partly offset by the improved operating results in our cloud business as well as enhanced operating efficiencies across various businesses. Our GAAP net income was RMB 10.4 billion, a decrease of 75%, primarily due to the decrease in income from operations and decrease in net gains from disposal of investments and mark-to-market changes of our equity investments. Operating cash flow this quarter increased by 11% to RMB 22.9 billion compared to RMB 20.7 billion in the same quarter last year. Free cash flow was an outflow of RMB 44.7 billion compared to an outflow of RMB 18.8 billion in the same quarter last year. The decrease was mainly attributed to the investment in cloud infrastructure. CapEx was RMB 67.7 billion this quarter, reflecting our continued investments in AI infrastructure to meet strong and growing customer demand. The significant year-over-year increase is due to several reasons, including fluctuations in procurement cycles, increase in CPU compute capacity driven by anticipated growing customer adoption of AI agents and higher pricing of a broad range of chip components. As of June 30, 2026, we held approximately USD 30.7 billion in net cash, excluding debt with maturities beyond 5 years, our net cash position stands at approximately [ USD 46.5 billion ]. This balance sheet strength gives us confidence to invest for robust growth. Our AI + Cloud investment has a clear path to attractive ROIC. Our servers equipped with chips typically reach breakeven within 3 years. With a 5-year useful life, we expect them to get positive free cash flow, at least in the 2 years following breakeven. For the quarter ended June 30, 2026, we repurchased shares of an aggregate consideration of USD 162 billion. We remain committed to maximizing long-term shareholder returns through disciplined capital allocation across investments for AI + Cloud business growth, share buybacks and dividends. We will adjust our priorities as market conditions and the strategic needs evolve. Now let's first look at our e-commerce businesses. The new Alibaba e-commerce group reflects our strategic focus on unlocking significant synergies across our domestic and cross-border e-commerce businesses. Starting from this quarter, we will present Alibaba E-commerce Group's revenue as the following: first, China e-commerce; second, China quick commerce; third, international e-commerce; and fourth, global wholesale. Revenue for Alibaba e-commerce group was RMB 205.9 billion, an increase of 4%. Customer management revenue decreased by 7%. Excluding the contra revenue impact from the new business development program, customer management revenue would have grown by 1% year-over-year. Revenue from China quick commerce business was RMB 53.3 billion, an increase of 45%, driven by Freshippo and Taobao instant commerce. Alibaba E-commerce Group's adjusted EBITDA remained relatively stable year-over-year at RMB 39.7 billion, underscoring our cost discipline against the backdrop of increased investments in user experiences and technology. Taobao instant commerce continued to improve its unit economics quarter-over-quarter while maintaining market share, driven by higher average order value and enhanced fulfillment logistics efficiency. In addition, AliExpress achieved our pre-profit this quarter. We aim to maintain steady profit in our conventional e-commerce business while continuing to drive profitability improvement in our quick commerce business. Now let's review the business updates and results of AI Cloud and Compute Services, which comprises the Cloud Intelligence Group and T-Head. The year-over-year growth of total revenue and revenue from external customers both accelerated to 45%. Revenue from Alibaba Cloud also accelerated growing 45% year-over-year. We are confident the growth rate will further accelerate in the coming quarters. This quarter's AI-related product revenue was RMB 12.4 billion, implying an annual -- revenue run rate of RMB 49.5 billion. It delivered a 12th consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth and accounted for 35% of external cloud revenue. The adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 12%, driven by improved economies of scale and a stronger pricing power of AI-related products amid tight market supply. We expect EBITDA margin to further expand steadily in the coming quarters by improving resource utilization, optimizing model portfolio and innovating new scenarios, we are accelerating the growth of AI + Cloud business and driving greater benefits of scale. AI Lab and Applications comprises AI model labs Qwen Consumer Business Group and QwenWork. Its adjusted EBITDA was a loss of RMB 13.9 billion, primarily due to our increased investment in AI capabilities and higher inference costs related to Qwen app. The loss significantly narrowed quarter-over-quarter due to the reduction in marketing expenses for Qwen app. We expect the segment loss to narrow over the coming quarters driven by improving efficiency in both model training and marketing spend on Qwen app. We have launched our frontier language coding, video, audio, image and music models or delivering top-tier performance. 250 million have had their first AI-driven shopping experience through Qwen app's agentic features across an expanding range of e-commerce and other services since the launch of Qwen app. All other segment revenue remained stable at RMB 28.8 billion. All other adjusted EBITDA was a loss of RMB 3.3 billion primarily due to our increased investment in technology. AI has progressed from incubation to commercialization at scale as we expand our market share, strengthen AI leadership and improving operating efficiency, we are gaining greater strategic and financial flexibility to make disciplined and sustained investments in both full stack AI capabilities and consumption opportunities driving secular growth and greater value for our shareholders. Thank you. That's the end of our prepared remarks. We can open up for Q&A. Lydia Lu: Thank you, Toby. We will now begin the Q&A session. 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 statements in the original language will prevail. Operator, please start the Q&A session. Thank you. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Alicia Yap with Citigroup. Alicis a Yap: Also congrats on your solid cloud performance. Could management please comment on the reasons and the drivers for the significant increase in the CapEx this quarter? And also, what is the expected CapEx trend for the coming quarters? And are these -- are there any updates to the existing 3-year CapEx budget that you have of this RMB 380 billion that you mentioned before? And also, we would appreciate if management can also provide a breakdown of CapEx allocation across the different services like the training costs and all that? And then also, what is management expected return on the invested capital for these investments? Unknown Executive: [Interpreted] Thank you very much for the question. It's an important question, and I'd like to take the opportunity perhaps to explain generally what our business model is for AI and our expectations around CapEx going forward. So indeed, last February, we announced a 3-year capital investment plan with total investment of RMB 380 billion as of the end of the June quarter this year, we had already spent RMB 190 billion with progress broadly in line with our expectations. While this quarter spending of RMB 67.1 billion is somewhat higher, hardware deliveries follow different procurement cycles. There can be fluctuations in the cadence and pace of hardware deliveries. So it's not evenly distributed across different quarters. So the increase primarily reflects volatility in those equipment delivery schedules. At the same time, we increased procurement of CPUs this quarter as we are witnessing a substantial surge in demand driven by the agent-centric era. Of course, rising prices for semiconductor components have also contributed to this trend. So I don't think we should take the spending for this quarter and multiply it by 4 to come up with an annualized figure for the year or to expect that there'll be a steady linear progression. The build-out has been progressing at a steady pace, but that is the overall situation. [Interpreted] Next, let me expand on our full stack AI business model. This is an asset-heavy business model. If you think about all of the different ways that AI is monetized and can be monetized, be it through software subscriptions, be it through API calls, through Models as a Service, through training, inference. In all of these different respects, you need compute centers to run and to monetize. So it's only possible to monetize when you have that compute capacity in place. So what that means is that we need to be investing upfront in order to be able to grow this business model and monetize across all of those different areas. So that's why beginning in 2025, we began a heavy investment cycle in hardware. And this is really a function of that asset-heavy business model, as I explained, in order to be able to capture that future growth. We first need to make these CapEx investments to build out the necessary compute capacity. [Interpreted] Next, let me explain why we see return on invested capital in AI-related CapEx as highly certain. There's consensus across the industry that the current shortage in AI compute will not be resolved until at least 2030. So industry-wide then, it makes sense that there should be high certainty in our investments in AI compute. Based on average gross margins today, roughly, we can breakeven on AI-related CapEx in 3 years. And of course, average gross margin continues to rise, and we expect to be able to shorten that payback period, say, to 2.5 years. [Interpreted] Following that 3-year payback period, these AI assets that we've invested in can achieve very positive and robust cash flow. So to give you some direct examples A100 purchased in 2020 or A100 purchased in 20 -- sorry, V100 purchased in 2018, even today are still running at full capacity. [Interpreted] Additionally, we have 3 means that we can leverage to further enhance gross margin and return on invested capital. First is we can continue to develop state-of-the-art models and enhanced gross margin on AI products themselves and continue to expand a higher-margin Model as a Service, MaaS, businesses, and we can adopt our product mix across IaaS and across software to achieve higher gross margin on the portfolio as a whole. And as a result of improving gross margin, you've already seen an overall increase of 4.4 percentage points in Alibaba Cloud's overall segment profitability, bringing it this quarter to 11.6%. So that represents initial validation of that thesis. [Interpreted] A very important piece of this is our ability to deploy our own proprietary chips. As you know, our own T-Head proprietary chip span GPUs, CPUs and networking chips, which are the critical chipsets for AI. And in AI data centers, the most expensive components are, of course, chips and storage. So we have a very significant advantage in being able to deploy our own proprietary chips. As we ramp up deployment of our own proprietary chips in our data centers as they account for an increasing proportion of total chips and replace commercially procured chips, we can expect to see substantially higher gross margin as well as profitability. [Interpreted] Third and also very importantly, we have means to monetize and get better efficiency of utilization of our own cash flow. These include, for example, co-building data centers with partners as well as pre-charging and receiving pre-payments for compute-based services. So these are important ways in which we can further enhance ROIC. [Interpreted] So through these 3 different methods, we can shorten the payback period for AI CapEx, for example, to 2.5 years or even 2 years. And we can apply a simple framework to understand this. At our current level of gross margin for AI products and under the assumption of a 3-year payback period on CapEx. Theoretically, keeping our growth rate below 33% would already enable positive cash flow. However, that is not our strategic choice at this time. Given that AI remains in a very early stage, we're committed to aggressively investing in CapEx and proactively scaling up to drive our rapid business expansion. As our product gross margin improves and our proprietary chip substitution rate increases, our payback period will shorten to 2.5 years or even less. And so under those circumstances, while pursuing growth of over 40%, we'll also be able to maintain positive cash flow. So that is our long-term strategic direction. Operator: Your next question comes from Charlene Liu with HSBC. Charlene Liu: I come from HSBC. First, when we get an update on the latest developments in quick commerce and under the reclassification of multiple business lines, which are regrouped under the Alibaba E-commerce Group. Can you talk about the future strategic focuses of these lines of businesses. Let me quickly translate the question myself. [Foreign Language] Unknown Executive: [Interpreted] Okay. Thank you very much for the question as well as for the translation. In the new fiscal year, indeed, we've realigned our e-commerce business segments. And moving forward, we'll be updating progress on 4 core areas: China e-commerce, quick commerce, international e-commerce and global -- B2B global wholesale. Let me then briefly share the strategic priorities and key considerations for each of these 4 segments in the period ahead. So starting with China e-commerce. While the domestic e-commerce landscape faces short-term macroeconomic challenges, our long-term strategy centers on strengthening core supply capabilities and at the same time, we aim to leverage AI to enhance the overall shopping experience and improve operational efficiency across the board. So first, regarding supply, since last year, Taobao and Tmall have focused on supporting original merchants, including branded sellers, while simultaneously unlocking the potential of high-quality white label suppliers from key industrial clusters. Unknown Executive: [Interpreted] We will continue to strengthen our partnerships with leading brand merchants, helping them achieve stable and sustainable business growth. Tmall remains the most critical operational hub for both major brands and many original merchants. At the same time, we are diving deeper into industrial clusters to source high-quality products directly from their origins. We are supporting more manufacturing factories and operating directly on our platform and leveraging our platform AI capabilities to enable white-label merchants to adopt a simpler and more efficient managed operation model. And the share of transactions being generated through that industrial cluster managed model continues to rise steadily. In the past quarter, during the recent 618 shopping festival despite certain macroeconomic challenges, the outcomes were aligned with our expectations and notably, core merchants achieved solid growth. [Interpreted] At the same time, we see significant opportunities for AI across both the supply and demand sides of e-commerce. On the consumer side, we will continue to launch new experiences and scenarios powered by AI, such as multimodal search and virtual try-ons. Our goal is twofold: first, to use AI technology to enhance the experience and efficiency of existing shopping scenarios, and we've already observed that AI has driven significant efficiency gains in our product recommendations; and secondly, to drive new kinds of AI-driven interaction. On the merchant side, we observed that merchants are already widely adopting AI in their operations. We're exploring ways to leverage AI across various operational links to boost merchant capabilities, particularly in data analytics, advertising and marketing and customer service where merchants can derive clear benefits. And going forward, we'll also collaborate with Qwen Office to launch AI agents that are specifically tailored for e-commerce scenarios. [Interpreted] Next, on quick commerce. After more than a year of investment and development, Taobao Instant Commerce has undergone substantial changes in scale and in market share with significant improvements across user mind share, supply diversity, logistics experience and order volume. Last quarter, while maintaining growth in both users and orders unit economics, UE, substantially improved and losses significantly reduced. On that basis, we will accelerate the integration of businesses such as Freshippo and Tmall supermarket to develop the nonfood categories growth within the Quick Commerce business, and we'll place a particular focus on expanding our front warehouses. Over the past year, Freshippo has accelerated the development of front warehouses leading to a year-over-year increase in GMV. [Interpreted] Meanwhile, Quick Commerce will continue to expand its category coverage and innovate in key areas to enhance the consumer experience. We expect the transaction volume of quick commerce for nonfood categories to surpass that of food categories within the next fiscal year, driving growth in many different physical goods categories across the overall e-commerce business. The Quick Commerce business is expected to achieve overall profitability in FY '29. In the long term, we believe it has the potential to contribute 30% of the platform's total GMV, becoming the second growth curve for our e-commerce business. [Interpreted] Third is international e-commerce. In the short term, our international e-commerce business has indeed been affected by tariff policies and the geopolitical environment pressuring growth. That said, despite the complex market environment, our cross-border business has delivered significant improvement in profitability while maintaining growth in transaction volume. In terms of both transaction scale and profitability, we believe the cross-border business holds long-term growth potential. In addition, our local e-commerce platforms in international markets such as Turkey and the Middle East are growing rapidly and operating efficiency in markets such as Southeast Asia continues to improve. [Interpreted] Fourth is global B2B. Our B2B businesses, including the 1688 and alibaba.com platforms have grown consistently over the past 2 decades and we see that AI technology will bring profound changes to our B2B platforms and may even fundamentally reshape existing business models. In particular, the agentic model will play an increasingly important role in B2B transactions. We've launched Accio Work, which is an AI agent for cross-border merchants and it had already attracted over 50,000 paying merchants shortly after its launch. AI is comprehensively transforming the way that B2B merchants do business, especially cross-border merchants. We believe that building on our 2 years of know-how in this -- 2 decades of know-how in this field, we have the opportunity to create entirely new business models and commercial opportunities in B2B and in cross-border trade in the AI era. [Interpreted] Overall, over the past few years, we have completed a new strategic positioning for our e-commerce businesses across several key areas. And going forward, we aim to continue leveraging our strengths from supply chain synergies to AI technology to unlock greater growth potential for the e-commerce segment in the AI era, while building a more diversified revenue and profit structure to drive steadier development of the overall segment. Operator: Your next question comes from Yang Bai with CICC. Yang Bai: [Interpreted] My question is about the cloud and AI business. We've seen that Alibaba Cloud's revenue growth has been accelerating quarter-by-quarter reaching 45% this quarter. We know the company has previously set a long-term goal of exceeding USD 100 billion in external cloud revenue over the next 5 years. And you've also now indicated that growth will remain on an accelerated trajectory in the quarters ahead. So I'd like to ask 2 questions. First, looking ahead to the coming quarters, what do you anticipate being the pace of growth in the cloud business. What are the core drivers underpinning the continued acceleration of cloud computing growth? And then secondly, as you mentioned, the industry is now in a phase of relatively tight capacity in terms of supply of compute. And you just mentioned that, that supply demand dynamic may shift around 2030. So I'd like to ask from an even longer-term perspective, what are the fundamental growth drivers for the cloud business? And do they differ from those in the short term? Unknown Executive: [Interpreted] Thank you for the question. And I think I can expand on this in 3 different areas. I can start by looking at our current business and the relevant data. Secondly, I can discuss the drivers for growth. And then thirdly, I can share with you our long-term perspective based on that analysis. So let me begin with the first part, covering our current business and the key metrics. So as you've seen, external revenue for the AI and Cloud segment has been accelerating now for 9 consecutive quarters. And in this last quarter, growth has already accelerated to 45%. We're seeing very strong customer demand and our offerings boast a distinct competitive advantage compared to those of other cloud providers. As a result, we expect revenue growth to continue accelerating over the coming quarters. We've observed that AI-related products generated RMB 12.4 billion in revenue this quarter. And so if we convert that into an annualized U.S. dollar figure, that works out to USD 7.3 billion in annual revenue. Looking ahead to the next quarter, our own forecast is that, that same annualized revenue for AI quarters -- next quarter will approach USD 10 billion. So our growth rate remains exceptionally strong. At the same time, we also expect our EBITDA margin to improve quarter by quarter sequentially over the next few quarters. Additionally, something very important in respect to the cloud business is growth in demand for MaaS. We've seen very significant growth in demand for MaaS this quarter, coupled with ongoing improvement in inference efficiencies. So the ARR of our MaaS business has now surpassed RMB 16 billion. And actually, let me clarify. That's the latest data as of August, it's already surpassed RMB 16 billion. [Interpreted] Next, let me expand on the growth drivers within our business model. So it's important to understand that Alibaba's investment model for AI is fundamentally different from that pure-play AI companies. We are pursuing an intensive strategy across the full stack including chips, including AI cloud infrastructure and including models. And we maintain a leading position in the industry across all 3 of those most critical domains. Moreover, we believe that the development of AI and technology across the industry is still in its early stages. Looking forward, different stages of technological development, the core commercial value within the AI industry may shift across different layers, including chips, cloud computing models and applications. Our full stack investments ensure that we can deliver optimal service capabilities and the best value for money positioning us favorably in the industry going forward and ensuring that within each stage of technological development, it's possible for us to maintain competitiveness and sustained growth momentum. [Interpreted] Next, let me look ahead to what we think is going to be the most important growth driver over the next 1 to 2 years in the short term. So we've seen exponential demand for commercial insurance services as of the end of 2025. This exponential growth in demand for inference has marked a fundamental shift in the model, whereby compute has now become the core asset driving AI revenue. And today, all AI-related revenue models are centered on AI compute. And at the same time, there's a consensus across the industry, as I mentioned, that compute will remain in a shortage of supply for some time to come. At the same time, the higher gross margins of MaaS inference services have also made a major difference if compute was once a cost center, traditionally, compute has now been transformed into a core productive asset whose value generation is positively correlated with revenue. So high-priced computing power remains in short supply across the industry precisely at a time where you have widespread adoption of GPUs across diverse use cases. So pricing models are tending to converge on the most high margin, the most margin generative monetization approaches. So this is driving the pricing models for nearly all GPU-related products. Moreover, Alibaba, both comprehensive multimodal model capabilities. Our models are state-of-the-art level within the industry, giving us a distinct advantage in realizing the value of that compute power and providing a robust anchor for our pricing strategy. When it comes time to price for new customers or to sign -- reassign contracts with existing customers as they renew, we can adopt more healthy pricing models. And so we expect to see this as a very positive short-term driver for improving margin in the coming year plus. [Interpreted] Next, let me talk about the scale effects and networking effects, which are very important long-term growth drivers in AI cloud. For the past couple of years, a lot of people have asked what is the super app for AI. And the answer to that is that the real super application is compute, cloud-based AI compute because all of these different workloads need to run on a full stack of AI cloud compute, including training, inferencing, AI software and agents requiring GPUs, CPUs, storage, databases, virtualization as well as harness tools among others. So AI cloud is like a super city in which workload is the residents and continually iterating full stack AI cloud services or the urban infrastructure, which in turn attracts more new residents and enhances the stickiness of the existing residents. So this is where you see an extremely powerful network effect and scale effect. [Interpreted] Given that we operate the largest number of data centers across any Asian cloud provider, we benefit from the strongest economies of scale. At the same time, the large-scale deployment of our proprietary T-Head AI chips allows us to avoid the high price premiums associated with procuring expensive commercial GPUs thus avoiding erosion of our gross margins. And with our state-of-the-art performance in our proprietary models, we possess strong pricing power for our compute resources. So looking ahead from the perspective of industry development trends and our own product strength, the long-term revenue growth trend and margin expansion trend are exceptionally strong. And as a result, we're highly confident in our ability to achieve our goal of RMB 100 billion in external cloud revenue by 2030. And we have good visibility into achieving gross margin of 20%. Operator: Your next question comes from Yuan Liao with CITICS. Yuan Liao: [Interpreted] Congratulations on the strong quarterly results and especially the progress made in the AI sector. So I have a follow-up question on the MaaS business. As Eddie mentioned earlier, ARR as of August has exceeded RMB 16 billion in last quarter, I believe you stated that the target for year-end is to surpass RMB 30 billion in MaaS ARR. So I'm wondering, given the progress to date, do you anticipate making any adjustments to that year-end goal? And then additionally, within the MaaS business, what are the respective shares of our own proprietary models versus third-party models. And as model-related competition intensifies and more open source models emerge how all these factors possibly affect gross margin and profitability in the MaaS business? Unknown Executive: [Interpreted] Thank you for the question. Yes, indeed, growth in Bailian's MaaS business is very rapid. And in -- as of August, we reached RMB 16 billion or surpassed RMB 16 billion in ARR. So given the current growth momentum as well as the pipeline of new models slated for launch, we remain confident that we will achieve our year-end target of RMB 30 billion ARR by the end of the year. [Interpreted] So on our MaaS platform, our own proprietary model still account for the majority of the revenue. But having said that, revenue from third-party models is also not small. And having said that, perhaps let me talk a little bit about how we see different model capabilities. A lot of customers tend to need to use or want to use multiple different models in their own AI applications because those different models they can draw and have different characteristics or different capabilities. So having more open source models on platforms like ours like Bailian to provide inferencing is a good thing for us and for Bailian. When it comes to gross margin, the level of gross margin that we can achieve on a platform like Bailian from hosting our own proprietary models versus third-party models is actually very similar. It's highly comparable. We're really developing those proprietary models on the one hand in order to keep creating higher levels of model intelligence and also as part of our ultimate drive to achieve AGI. But simply from the perspective of the MaaS business, the level of gross margin from those 2 kinds of models is actually very comparable. But overall, having a prosperous and flourishing open ecosystem with many of these open source models on it is highly favorable for a cloud provider like Alibaba Cloud. Operator: Your final question comes from Alex Yao with JPMorgan. Alex Yao: [Interpreted] I'd like to come back to Eddie's earlier remarks, he spoke at length about how Alibaba is developing a full stack AI ecosystem. My question really is in which layer of that full stack ecosystem, do you think value will accrete and monetization will be concentrated. We saw just after it has been released for 3 months that you open sourced the weight of your flagship model, Qwen 3.8 Max. At the same time, your proprietary chips are also proving successful, now serving over 600 external customers. I'm wondering if this means that the future value will accrete mainly in the compute layer or perhaps in the orchestration layer and not necessarily in the model layer or do you think that the value will accrete to different layers in different stages of development of the industry. And in the long term, if you think that value and monetization will largely be concentrated in the hardware and compute layers then how should we think about competition going forward, given that it will be a government-led process for allocating a lot of that hardware and compute capacity? Unknown Executive: [Interpreted] Thanks. That's a very professional question, and really it's a matter of long-term judgment. So I think it's inherently associated with a high level of uncertainty. But what I can say is that we are investing in the full stack. And what that means is that whichever layer represents the greatest value and no matter how that may shift across layers in different periods of time. All of those layers are part of our ecosystem. I guess I can share with you my own short-term view namely in the short-term perspective, I think that most of the value will be in chips and in AI cloud infrastructure. It's a pattern that we can see not just in China but globally across a lot of different companies when a technology is in its early stages and especially when there's a shortage of supply. Lots of the value tends to be concentrated in the infrastructure and in the core hardware. In this case, chips and storage. So in Alibaba's case, we've integrated our compute power, our cloud infrastructure and our AI inference into one core business segment. [Interpreted] Let me turn next to where the ultimate commercial value will be realized from these AI models. It's a question around which there's a lot of debate within the industry and indeed, there are different views even inside our own company. So here, I'm just sharing my own personal opinion. But in my personal view, I think that the current monetization model for large language models through APIs is just a short-term approach, a short-term transitional approach and is certainly not the ultimate business model. Our company has invested a tremendous amount of compute across our entire platform, but the objective is not simply to be able to generate that kind of short-term API revenue. I think when we get to the stage where we've accomplished AGI or we're close to achieving AGI at that point, the ultimate business model will be delivering actual products, delivering actual results that clients are looking for. It will be conducting the actual R&D that delivers products and that delivers operations. So the reason that all these different AI model companies are investing so heavily and engaging in an arms race today is not simply to be able to compete to provide that API-based service. It's because they have to eyes on that ultimate end game, where I think that the monetization level will be significantly higher, be much higher than what you see today selling the service through API calls. [Interpreted] In terms of hardware, I'd like to add a few thoughts regarding our T-Head proprietary chips. I know it's a topic about which we haven't communicated a lot with investors in the past, but the last generation of T-Head chips we've already manufactured over 500,000 of them and shipped. And then the latest generation in August has already been deployed on AI -- Alibaba's AI cloud as supernodes. And I think we're one of the only companies that's able to deploy such proprietary chips, domestic chips at scale. One thing that's really unique about our T-Head chips, domestically manufactured chips, is that they are designed with GPU architecture as their core technical foundation, and they can very well support both training and inference workloads. So there are now already several hundreds of companies that are leveraging these chips via Alibaba Cloud for both inference as well as for model training and these span companies across Embodied AI, autonomous driving as well as large model companies. So in terms of our generation 2 of chips, we are going to start developing them in the second half of this year. And we expect them to boast exceptionally high compute power as well as extremely robust interconnection bandwidth, making them fully capable of serving as a direct replacement for existing chips. So I think we're in a really, really unique position in the chip sector, especially when it comes to large scale model training. So I don't think that there's any government-led compute supply allocation scheme that could produce chips with such truly strong competitiveness. So I think that the T-Head's future is highly certain as a very key and core component of Alibaba Cloud, and we remain highly confident in our core competitive strength in this area. I've interacted with a lot of different engineers across China. And I can tell you that these chips have a very broad audience with engineers across a wide range of different engineering domains. [Interpreted] So to sum up, I think that our T-Head ships are definitely the best among domestic Chinese chips for supporting both training and inference across a wide range of different industries. So we really are #1 in the industry. And then I think in terms of future production capacity and deployment, we can confidently claim to be at least 1 of the top 2. But in terms of our ability to actually reach customers with AI chips, Alibaba Cloud is the largest player by market share in China's cloud and AI market. So I think we have a very strong edge when it comes to channel distribution. So from this perspective, I am highly confident in the long-term commercial value of T-Head chips. Lydia Lu: Thank you very much. We appreciate your support, and we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Thank you. Operator: Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.] Before you buy stock in Alibaba Group, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Alibaba Group wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $439,308!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,286,826!* That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by nearly 5x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 27, 2026. This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Alibaba (BABA) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-08-28The Memory-Chip Battle Is on as China’s CXMT Posts Explosive Earnings Report
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The Memory-Chip Battle Is on as China’s CXMT Posts Explosive Earnings Report
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Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-08-26Stock Market Midday, Aug. 26: Markets Muted as Investors Await Nvidia Earnings
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Stock Market Midday, Aug. 26: Markets Muted as Investors Await Nvidia Earnings
As of 11:47 AM ET, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) is up 0.01% to 7,678, while the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) has fallen 0.12% to 26,117, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) is trading 0.18% lower at 53,480 as traders react to sticky inflation data. Gold is down 0.61% to $4,608.72, while the 10-Year Treasury yield gained 0.017 to 4.67%. Energy and industrial stocks lead the sector gainers, and basic materials and healthcare trail. Meta Platforms whipsawed this morning following a $17 billion legal settlement. The stock initially popped before paring gains as markets digested the news. Abercrombie & Fitch soared an eye-watering 40% after beating earnings estimates and raising its full-year guidance. Meanwhile, Alibaba Group Holding erased some losses after plunging on news of a $10 billion share placement to fund artificial intelligence (AI) development. Today's July Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation data was slightly higher than expected, which weighed on morning trading. Prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months to July, a touch above analyst estimates. Markets are particularly sensitive to anything that might make the Federal Reserve more likely to raise interest rates, as this can slow equity growth, and stubborn inflation falls under that category. Today's biggest news hasn't happened yet: Traders are waiting for after-hours results from Nvidia, which could tell investors more about the sustainability of the AI boom and whether the massive capital outlay is justified. The company, often viewed as a bellwether for the whole AI ecosystem, may post over $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, but that may not be enough to ease investor jitters. Before you buy stock in Invesco QQQ Trust, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Invesco QQQ Trust wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $443,461!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,307,633!* Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 973% — a market-crushing outperfo…Read full documentShow less
As of 11:47 AM ET, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) is up 0.01% to 7,678, while the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) has fallen 0.12% to 26,117, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) is trading 0.18% lower at 53,480 as traders react to sticky inflation data. Gold is down 0.61% to $4,608.72, while the 10-Year Treasury yield gained 0.017 to 4.67%. Energy and industrial stocks lead the sector gainers, and basic materials and healthcare trail. Meta Platforms whipsawed this morning following a $17 billion legal settlement. The stock initially popped before paring gains as markets digested the news. Abercrombie & Fitch soared an eye-watering 40% after beating earnings estimates and raising its full-year guidance. Meanwhile, Alibaba Group Holding erased some losses after plunging on news of a $10 billion share placement to fund artificial intelligence (AI) development. Today's July Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation data was slightly higher than expected, which weighed on morning trading. Prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months to July, a touch above analyst estimates. Markets are particularly sensitive to anything that might make the Federal Reserve more likely to raise interest rates, as this can slow equity growth, and stubborn inflation falls under that category. Today's biggest news hasn't happened yet: Traders are waiting for after-hours results from Nvidia, which could tell investors more about the sustainability of the AI boom and whether the massive capital outlay is justified. The company, often viewed as a bellwether for the whole AI ecosystem, may post over $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, but that may not be enough to ease investor jitters. Before you buy stock in Invesco QQQ Trust, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Invesco QQQ Trust wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $443,461!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,307,633!* Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 973% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 213% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 26, 2026. Emma Newbery has positions in CrowdStrike and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends CrowdStrike, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, and Salesforce. The Motley Fool recommends Abercrombie & Fitch and Alibaba Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Stock Market Midday, Aug. 26: Markets Muted as Investors Await Nvidia Earnings was originally published by The Motley Fool
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-08-24A $900 Million Reason to Be Excited About XPEV Stock, Even After Disappointing Earnings Results
Barchart
A $900 Million Reason to Be Excited About XPEV Stock, Even After Disappointing Earnings Results
Xpeng (XPEV) shares tanked on Aug. 24 after the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer’s Q2 earnings missed estimates and management issued disappointing guidance for the future. The company now sees its revenue falling between RMB21.7 billion and RMB23.4 billion in the third quarter, well below RMB26.69 billion that analysts had forecast. Following today’s decline, Xpeng stock is down roughly 45% versus the start of this year. Soros Fund Management Opened a New Position in Nebius During Q2. What This Means for NBIS Stock. Nvidia Earnings, Jackson Hole and Other Key Things to Watch this Week Ahead of Nvidia Earnings, Here's What Barchart Data Says Comes Next for NVDA Stock Tired of missing midday reversals? The FREE Barchart Brief newsletter keeps you in the know. Sign up now! Long-term investors nonetheless have reason to be excited about XPEV shares. Why? Because alongside earnings, the Chinese company said its robotics business has raised over $900 million in its first funding round, securing a post-money valuation exceeding $6.3 billion. The financing, backed by major investors including Tencent (TCEHY) and Alibaba (BABA), represents a record single private funding round for Beijing’s embodied-AI sector. Xpeng plans on using the proceeds to accelerate robotics hardware and software development, physical-AI models, data collection, manufacturing capacity, and overseas expansion. The NYSE-listed firm also aims to produce 1,000 IRON humanoid robots per month by the end of 2026 — with initial deployments at retail and industrial locations and broader commercialization targeted for 2027. The robotics business announcement is significant given it signals potential upside that may not be fully reflected in Xpeng shares’ valuation yet. XPEV remains attractive also because the strength in its services and other businesses helped drive a 340bps year-on-year increase in the firm’s overall gross margin to 20.7% in its second quarter. In short, investors are fixating on the muted near-term outlook for now. However, the combination of expanding overall margin, rapidly growing services segment, and a robotics unit worth over $6.3 billion suggests there may be more to the XPEV story than the EV business alone. It's also worth mentioning that Wall Street remains positive on XPEV stock for the remainder of 2026. According to Barchart, the consensus rating on Xpeng sit…Read full documentShow less
Xpeng (XPEV) shares tanked on Aug. 24 after the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer’s Q2 earnings missed estimates and management issued disappointing guidance for the future. The company now sees its revenue falling between RMB21.7 billion and RMB23.4 billion in the third quarter, well below RMB26.69 billion that analysts had forecast. Following today’s decline, Xpeng stock is down roughly 45% versus the start of this year. Soros Fund Management Opened a New Position in Nebius During Q2. What This Means for NBIS Stock. Nvidia Earnings, Jackson Hole and Other Key Things to Watch this Week Ahead of Nvidia Earnings, Here's What Barchart Data Says Comes Next for NVDA Stock Tired of missing midday reversals? The FREE Barchart Brief newsletter keeps you in the know. Sign up now! Long-term investors nonetheless have reason to be excited about XPEV shares. Why? Because alongside earnings, the Chinese company said its robotics business has raised over $900 million in its first funding round, securing a post-money valuation exceeding $6.3 billion. The financing, backed by major investors including Tencent (TCEHY) and Alibaba (BABA), represents a record single private funding round for Beijing’s embodied-AI sector. Xpeng plans on using the proceeds to accelerate robotics hardware and software development, physical-AI models, data collection, manufacturing capacity, and overseas expansion. The NYSE-listed firm also aims to produce 1,000 IRON humanoid robots per month by the end of 2026 — with initial deployments at retail and industrial locations and broader commercialization targeted for 2027. The robotics business announcement is significant given it signals potential upside that may not be fully reflected in Xpeng shares’ valuation yet. XPEV remains attractive also because the strength in its services and other businesses helped drive a 340bps year-on-year increase in the firm’s overall gross margin to 20.7% in its second quarter. In short, investors are fixating on the muted near-term outlook for now. However, the combination of expanding overall margin, rapidly growing services segment, and a robotics unit worth over $6.3 billion suggests there may be more to the XPEV story than the EV business alone. It's also worth mentioning that Wall Street remains positive on XPEV stock for the remainder of 2026. According to Barchart, the consensus rating on Xpeng sits at “Moderate Buy,” with the mean price target of $21.59 indicating potential for a whopping 90% rally from current levels. On the date of publication, Wajeeh Khan did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com
Related articleQuarter not tagged2026-08-24Temu Parent PDD Second-Quarter Earnings Top Views; Revenue Falls Short
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Temu Parent PDD Second-Quarter Earnings Top Views; Revenue Falls Short
PDD (PDD) reported second-quarter earnings ahead of Wall Street estimates on Monday even as operatin

