SHANGHAI: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba saw revenues leap 59 per cent year-on-year for the quarter ended in June, it said on Thursday, its strongest growth since it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014.

Revenue for the company, seen as a proxy for China’s increasingly crucial consumer sector, reached 32.15 billion yuan ($4.83bn) in the June quarter, it said in a statement.

Alibaba is China’s dominant player in online commerce, with its Taobao platform estimated to hold more than 90 per cent of the consumer-to-consumer market, and its Tmall platform is believed to have over half of business-to-consumer transactions.

But according to the company net income plunged 77pc year-on-year to $1.08bn in the quarter, the first of its financial year. Still, Alibaba’s chief financial officer Maggie Wu described the results as “excellent”.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2016