Alibaba’s efforts to reduce costs and China’s relaxation of COVID-19 limitations helped it report better-than-expected quarterly revenue on Thursday.
For its fiscal third quarter through December 31, revenue increased 2% to 247.76 billion yuan ($35.92 billion), exceeding the Refinitiv average estimate of 245.18 billion yuan derived from 23 analysts, reported Reuters.
The e-commerce behemoth has survived China’s poor economy, which only relaxed its three-year zero-COVID policy in December.
U.S. shares of Alibaba were up 1.8% just after Wall Street began, after trading as much as 6% higher in pre-market trades.
China’s retail sales decreased by 1.8% in December, while its economy achieved one of its weakest growth rates in nearly half a century in 2022, rising just 3%.
With widespread support for the OpenAi chatbot, Alibaba announced earlier this month that it was creating an AI tool similar to ChatGPT that it was testing within the organization.
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Ariel Ben Solomon is the Growth and Strategy manager at Ecomhunt. He is the host of the Ecomhunt Podcast. Can be followed on Twitter at @ArielBenSolomon