Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's sales soared 55 percent in the last quarter, thanks in part to a more than doubling of revenue from cloud computing, the company said Wednesday.
The year-on-year growth in group sales, to 34.29 billion yuan ($5.14 billion), was not matched by net profit, which slid 66 percent to 7.62 billion yuan ($1.14 billion).
The drop was mostly due to an unfavourable comparison, as last year the firm booked an exceptional gain linked to the re-evaluation of its participation in one unit.
"Alibaba Group had a great quarter," chief executive Daniel Zhang said in a statement on the firm's second quarter, which ended in September.
Sales in the core commerce unit rose 41 percent year-on-year to $4.27 billion.
Alibaba is China's dominant player in online commerce, with its Taobao platform estimated to hold more than 90 percent of the consumer-to-consumer market, while its Tmall platform is believed to have over half of business-to-consumer transactions.