Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba stated flat revenue growth on Thursday for the first time, as the country tackled with an economic slowdown and Covid-19 revivals kept consumers jittery.
Revenue came in at 205.55 billion yuan ($30.7 billion) in the April-June quarter, beating analyst prospects although being slightly below the same period last year following a drop in the company’s China commerce segment revenue, Alibaba said.
Alibaba’s performance is widely seen as a scale of Chinese consumer sentiment given its market supremacy, but its revenue growth has slowed decidedly over the past year.
The company has been dealing with growing competition and economic fallout from strict Covid restrictions that have assaulted consumer sentiment, lacking the unemployment rate up and tangled supply chains.
“Following a relatively slow April and May, we saw signs of recovery across our businesses in June,” added Alibaba Group’s chairman and chief executive Daniel Zhang in a declaration.
The company’s revenue growth was flat “primarily due to a decline in China commerce segment revenue” while this was offset by growth in the cloud segment, Alibaba said.