ALIBABA Group Holding Ltd. yesterday added US$7.5 billion to its market value after reporting quarterly results that beat estimates and raising its full-year sales forecast.

    China’s biggest e-commerce company increased its projection for fiscal 2017 revenue growth to 53 percent, from 48 percent previously, as Chinese spending stays strong and the company wrings revenue from fledgling areas such as cloud computing, entertainment and search. That may help assuage investors concerned that a deceleration in the world’s second-largest economy is curtailing Alibaba’s main online commerce business.

    Despite a fairly stagnant user base of about 443 million, Alibaba benefited from a record Nov. 11 Singles’ Day spending spree, and gained a larger share of online advertising from rivals such as Baidu Inc.

    It also more than doubled sales from cloud computing in the December quarter. As transaction growth slows, Alibaba is generating more revenue from merchants by selling them services to draw in buyers, and expanding its Netflix-like entertainment arm.

    “The growth is mostly coming from the strong performance in Alibaba’s digital entertainment platforms, its ability to make money from cloud computing,” said Ray Zhao, a Shenzhen-based analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co. “Investors will have a huge reaction to the revenue forecast raise.”

    The company, which gets most of its revenue from its home market, wants to accelerate its globalization this year, chief executive officer Daniel Zhang told analysts on a conference call. Other priorities include pushing deeper into rural China, and pitting its burgeoning cloud business against the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

    It’s also spending enormous amounts to acquire Hollywood content to power its loss-making digital media division. Zhang, however, said the bleeding will slow as more paying customers come onboard, given their ability to convert shoppers into viewers.

    “Digital content will make up an increasingly large proportion of total consumption volume of young consumers,” Zhang said.

    Group sales rose 54 percent to 53.2 billion yuan (US$7.8 billion) in the December quarter, topping the 50.1 billion-yuan expected by analysts. Adjusted earnings-per-share came to 9.02 yuan compared with estimates for 7.70 yuan. Net income climbed 38 percent to 17.2 billion yuan. (SD-Agencies)