Alibaba quarterly revenue disappoints, shares fall

Alibaba did not address Tuesday's announcement that its second-biggest shareholder Yahoo Inc plans to spin off its 15 percent stake in the Chinese company.

But Alibaba's Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai did use the post-results conference call to take a shot at a Chinese regulator, after the watchdog called out the company in a report published on Wednesday for failing to do enough to stamp out illegal business on its platforms.

Tsai said the report was "flawed" and assured listeners that Alibaba had not seen the report before it was published, nor had it requested its publication to be delayed. The report by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) sparked concern that Alibaba had failed to disclose risk factors to its investors prior to its bumper listing in September.

SLIPPING GROWTH

Revenue growth, at its lowest level since at least 2013, and margins slipped as sales through mobile devices, typically smaller-ticket items, accounted for a bigger slice of total sales than in the previous quarter.

Gross merchandise volume (GMV), or the sum of all Alibaba's online commerce transactions, rose 49 percent to $127 billion. Mobile GMV continued to grow, accounting for 42 percent of total GMV, up from 36 percent in the September quarter.

The number of mobile monthly active users nearly doubled from the same quarter the previous year to 265 million. Overall annual active buyers grew 45 percent to 334 million from 307 million in the September quarter - exceeding the population of the United States.