New York (CNN Business)China’s economy has bounced back from the Covid-19 outbreak in China’s Wuhan province. That’s great news for Alibaba, the e-commerce and cloud giant. But the company also acknowledged the threat of being caught up in the burgeoning trade war between the United States and China.
Alibaba (BABA) posted strong sales and earnings growth Thursday morning that topped Wall Street’s forecasts. Overall revenue was up nearly 35% from a year ago and the company also posted solid increases in total and mobile users.The stock rose slightly during early trading Thursday and is up about 25% so far in 2020.
“Although the global community continues to struggle with uncertainties surrounding the pandemic, we have seen encouraging signs of recovery in China due to effective management of the outbreak in vast majority of the country,” said Alibaba charman and CEO Daniel Zhang during a call with analysts.
New sanctions deal 'lethal blow' to Huawei. China decries US bullyingBut Alibaba is concerned it could become a target in the Trump administration’s war on Chinese tech firms such as ByteDance-owned TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat.Read MoreZhang acknowledged during the conference call with analysts that Alibaba faces “uncertainties from not only the global pandemic, but also increasing tensions between US and China.” “We are closely monitoring the latest shift in US government policies towards Chinese companies, which is a very fluid situation,” Zhang added. “We are assessing the situation and any potential impact carefully and thoroughly and will take necessary actions to comply with any new regulations.Alibaba does not have a major retail presence in the United States. But a growing number of small businesses in America use Alibaba’s cloud hosting services to set up their own digital commerce operations.
After TikTok and WeChat, Alibaba could be the next target in Trump's tech war Alibaba competes with the likes of Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL) in the lucrative cloud market. Alibaba said its cloud revenue rose nearly 60% from a year ago.Zhang touted its cloud prowess — and how that helps American companies — during the conference call. “As the world’s largest e-commerce platform, Alibaba’s primary commercial focus in the US is to support American brands, retailers, small businesses and farmers to sell to consumers and trade partners in China as well as the other key markets around the world,” Zhang said.
“We believe global trade will continue, and Alibaba’s active pursuit of our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere are fully aligned with the interest of both China and the United States,” he added. Alibaba rival JD.com (JD) reported a better-than-expected jump in quarterly sales of 35% from a year ago earlier this week. Another Chinese e-commerce site, group deals platform Pinduoduo (PDD), will report its latest results Friday morning.
Source: edition.cnn.com