Alibaba Group Announces March Quarter 2026 and Fiscal Year 2026 Results
$BABA #alibaba--Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988 (HKD Counter) and 89988 (RMB Counter), “Alibaba”, “Alibaba Group” or the “company”) today announced its financial r...
HONG KONG: $BABA #alibaba--Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988 (HKD Counter) and 89988 (RMB Counter), “Alibaba”, “Alibaba Group” or the “company”) today announced its financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2026.
“Alibaba’s full-stack AI investments have progressed from incubation to commercialization at scale. This quarter, we achieved accelerated breakthroughs across models, cloud infrastructure, and applications,” said Eddie Wu, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group. “Cloud Intelligence Group’s external revenue growth accelerated to 40%, with AI-related products accounting for 30% of this revenue. Our Qwen LLM demonstrated leadership in reasoning and coding while we strengthened our multimodal model portfolio with the launch of video generation and world models. As we see massive potential for agentic AI, we launched multiple enterprise AI agents for office and coding use cases, and we fully integrated e-commerce capabilities into the consumer-facing Qwen app, deepening synergies between AI and our consumer ecosystem.”
“Our strategic investments continued to translate into business growth. Cloud Intelligence Group’s revenue continued to accelerate, with AI-related product revenue achieving triple-digit growth for the eleventh consecutive quarter. China e-commerce customer management revenue grew 8% on a like-for-like basis. The unit economics and average order value of quick commerce steadily improved. We are confident in our business outlook and will continue to invest in AI + Cloud to strengthen our competitive advantages,” said Toby Xu, Chief Financial Officer of Alibaba Group.
BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS
In the quarter ended March 31, 2026:
- Revenue was RMB243,380 million (US$35,283 million), an increase of 3% year-over-year. Excluding revenue from the disposed businesses of Sun Art and Intime, revenue on a like-for-like basis would have grown by 11% year-over-year.
- Customer management revenue increased by 1% year-over-year. Excluding the contra revenue impact from the new business development program, customer management revenue on a like-for-like basis would have grown by 8% year-over-year.
- Loss from operations was RMB848 million (US$123 million), compared to an income from operations of RMB28,465 million in the same quarter of 2025, primarily due to the decrease in adjusted EBITA. Adjusted EBITA, a non-GAAP measurement, decreased 84% year-over-year to RMB5,102 million (US$740 million), primarily attributable to the investment in technology businesses, quick commerce and user experiences, partly offset by the improved operating results supported by continued growth in customer management service and Cloud business, as well as enhanced operating efficiencies across various businesses.
- Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was RMB25,476 million (US$3,693 million). Net income was RMB23,502 million (US$3,407 million), an increase of 96% year-over-year, primarily attributable to the year-over-year increase in net gain from mark-to-market changes of our equity investments, and disposal losses of Sun Art and Intime in the same quarter last year, partly offset by the decrease in adjusted EBITA. Non-GAAP net income in the quarter ended March 31, 2026 was RMB86 million (US$12 million), a decrease of 100% compared to RMB29,847 million in the same quarter of 2025.
- Diluted earnings per ADS was RMB10.36 (US$1.50). Diluted earnings per share was RMB1.30 (US$0.19 or HK$1.47). Non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS was RMB0.62 (US$0.09), a decrease of 95% year-over-year. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was RMB0.08 (US$0.01 or HK$0.09), a decrease of 95% year-over-year.
- Net cash provided by operating activities was RMB9,410 million (US$1,364 million), a decrease of 66% compared to RMB27,520 million in the same quarter of 2025. Free cash flow, a non-GAAP measurement of liquidity, was an outflow of RMB17,300 million (US$2,508 million), compared to an inflow of RMB3,743 million in the same quarter of 2025. The decrease in free cash flow was mainly attributed to the investment in quick commerce, user acquisition of Qwen app and increase in our cloud infrastructure expenditure. As of March 31, 2026, our cash and other liquid investments(1) were RMB520,824 million (US$75,504 million).
In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026:
- Revenue was RMB1,023,670 million (US$148,401 million), an increase of 3% year-over-year. Excluding revenue from the disposed businesses of Sun Art and Intime, revenue on a like-for-like basis would have grown by 11% year-over-year.
- Customer management revenue increased by 5% year-over-year. Excluding the contra revenue impact from the new business development program, customer management revenue on a like-for-like basis would have grown by 7% year-over-year.
- Income from operations was RMB50,150 million (US$7,270 million), a decrease of 64% year-over-year, primarily due to the decrease in adjusted EBITA and increase in impairment of goodwill, partly offset by the decrease in one-time provisions and non-cash share-based expenses. Adjusted EBITA, a non-GAAP measurement, decreased 56% year-over-year to RMB76,416 million (US$11,078 million), primarily attributable to the investment in quick commerce, user experiences, and technology businesses, partly offset by the improved operating results supported by continued growth in customer management service and Cloud business, as well as enhanced operating efficiencies across various businesses.
- Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was RMB105,904 million (US$15,353 million). Net income was RMB102,127 million (US$14,805 million), a decrease of 19% year-over-year, primarily attributable to the decrease in income from operations, partly offset by the year-over-year increase in net gain from mark-to-market changes of our equity investments, as well as net gains from disposal of investments, including local consumer service business of Trendyol in fiscal year 2026, compared to losses on disposal of Sun Art and Intime in fiscal year 2025. Non-GAAP net income in fiscal year 2026 was RMB60,658 million (US$8,794 million), a decrease of 62% compared to RMB158,122 million in fiscal year 2025.
- Diluted earnings per ADS was RMB44.00 (US$6.38). Diluted earnings per share was RMB5.50 (US$0.80 or HK$6.23). Non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS was RMB26.80 (US$3.89), a decrease of 59% year-over-year. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was RMB3.35 (US$0.49 or HK$3.79), a decrease of 59% year-over-year.
- Net cash provided by operating activities was RMB76,213 million (US$11,049 million), a decrease of 53% compared to RMB163,509 million in fiscal year 2025. Free cash flow, a non-GAAP measurement of liquidity, was an outflow of RMB46,609 million (US$6,757 million), compared to an inflow of RMB73,870 million in fiscal year 2025. The decrease in free cash flow was mainly attributed to the investment in quick commerce and increase in our cloud infrastructure expenditure. As of March 31, 2026, our cash and other liquid investments(1) were RMB520,824 million (US$75,504 million).
Reconciliations of GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures presented above are included at the end of this results announcement.
| ____________________ | ||
(1) | Cash and other liquid investments represent cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments and other treasury investments included in equity securities and other investments on the consolidated balance sheets, of which that are unrestricted for withdrawal and use. | |
BUSINESS AND STRATEGIC UPDATES
Consumption Businesses
Alibaba China E-commerce Group
We are prioritizing the integration of AI capabilities with our e-commerce applications to enhance the experiences for both consumers and merchants. On the consumer side, we integrated Taobao and Tmall e-commerce service into the Qwen app, thereby expanding Qwen’s user reach and adding a brand new AI-driven experience for our Taobao and Tmall customers. Additionally, the Taobao app launched the Qwen Shopping Assistant, an AI agent providing end-to-end assistance across the entire shopping journey, including idea generation, product discovery, in-sale support, order management, and post-purchase services. For merchants, we rolled out Wukong, our AI-native enterprise agent that integrates advanced agentic capabilities into workflow to bring efficiency to merchant operations.
To help merchants grow their businesses and increase willingness to spend on our platform, we upgraded our business development program for select merchants during the quarter, under which the level of platform subsidies for these merchants is directly tied to their marketing spend on our platform. For accounting purposes, such subsidies previously recorded as sales and marketing expenses are now recorded as a contra revenue item to customer management revenue (CMR). Accordingly, CMR grew 1% year-over-year during the quarter. Excluding the contra revenue impact from the program, on a like-for-like basis, CMR would have grown 8% year-over-year.
Our quick commerce business remained focused on scaling the business while improving unit economics, with increasing focus on high-value food orders and non-food categories. The quick commerce business further improved unit economics, and increased average order value quarter-over-quarter primarily driven by order mix optimization.
The number of 88VIP members, our highest spending consumer group, continued to increase by double digits year-over-year, surpassing 62 million. We remain focused on the retention of 88VIP members through enhanced value proposition to our most valued customers.
Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group (“AIDC”)
During the quarter, AIDC narrowed loss significantly year-over-year, approaching break-even, driven by a combination of logistics optimization and operating efficiency. The unit economics of the AliExpress’ Choice business continued to improve substantially on a sequential basis. We aim to diversify and enrich our product offerings by leveraging the supply chain advantages of the Alibaba ecosystem. AliExpress’ “Brand+” program further accelerated brand onboarding, and the penetration of quarterly transacting consumers for “Brand+” surpassed 30% during the quarter.
Our international wholesale platform, Alibaba.com, continued to broaden adoption of its AI-powered tools among merchants. In addition to our established AI sourcing agent Accio, we also launched Accio Work, an agentic business platform designed to handle the full operating lifecycle of global small and medium-sized businesses beyond sourcing alone, aiming to significantly lower the entry barrier for cross-border commerce and enhance operational efficiency.
AI + Cloud Businesses
Cloud Intelligence Group
For the quarter ended March 31, 2026, revenue from Cloud Intelligence Group was RMB41,626 million (US$6,035 million), a 38% increase from the same quarter last year. Notably, the year-over-year growth of revenue from external customers accelerated to 40%. This momentum was primarily driven by public cloud revenue growth, including the increasing adoption of AI-related products. AI-related product revenue continued to show strong momentum, achieving RMB8,971 million and delivering the eleventh consecutive quarter of triple-digit year-over-year growth.
Alibaba Cloud continues to onboard more customers to our comprehensive AI + cloud products and services, including high-performance networking, distributed storage, cloud operating system, and services for model training and inference. We are executing our strategy to lead China’s AI cloud market through our comprehensive full-stack AI capabilities across AI models, AI cloud infrastructure, and orchestration software that manages heterogeneous chip clusters, including our own proprietary inference chips.
During the quarter, we focused on executing our Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) strategy. As we observed rapidly increasing demand for MaaS, we launched a diverse portfolio of offerings on our MaaS platform Model Studio tailored to users ranging from individual developers to large enterprises. This comprises an expanded lineup of state-of-the-art models such as Qwen3.6-Plus, enterprise solutions with flexible Token Plans, and a growing suite of agents including Wukong, Meoo, and industry-specific agents. As a result, the customer base for Model Studio grew by eight-fold year-over-year as of March 2026.
Model
We continue to push the boundaries of AI capabilities through deep innovation, and we achieved significant breakthroughs in model intelligence recently through a series of new model launches within our large language and multimodal model portfolio.
In March, we introduced Qwen3.6-Plus which delivered significant all-round performance gains, with particularly notable improvements in coding and agentic programming. It achieves state-of-the-art results across front-end web development and complex repository-level tasks. Qwen3.6-Plus also features enhanced multimodal perception and reasoning, and a native context window of up to 1 million tokens, while further improving stability and reliability.
Complementing the Qwen family, we are also advancing specialized models including HappyOyster, a world model enabling real-time creation and interaction, and HappyHorse, a multimodal model for video generation. The commercialization of both models is currently being rolled out in phases.
Chip Design – T-Head
T-Head Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (“T-Head”), our chip design subsidiary, has achieved widespread industrial application of its proprietary AI chips, with the automotive sector serving as a leading example of large-scale adoption. Over 100,000 Zhenwu PPUs have been deployed on Alibaba Cloud’s public cloud platform, with more than 30 leading automakers and autonomous driving companies leveraging the chips for intelligent driving R&D. The Zhenwu chips, together with Alibaba Cloud and Qwen models, form a fully integrated technology stack that significantly accelerates both training and inference efficiency.
Dividends
Our board of directors has approved an annual regular cash dividend for fiscal year 2026 in the amount of US$0.13125 per ordinary share or US$1.05 per ADS, payable in U.S. dollars, to holders of ordinary shares and holders of ADSs, as of the close of business on June 11, 2026, Hong Kong Time and New York Time, respectively. The aggregate amount of the dividend will be approximately US$2.5 billion. As at the date hereof, the company does not hold any treasury shares whether in the Central Clearing and Settlement System, or otherwise.
For holders of ordinary shares, in order to qualify for the dividend, all valid documents for the transfers of shares accompanied by the relevant share certificates must be lodged with the company’s Hong Kong branch share registrar, Computershare Hong Kong Investor Services Limited, at Shops 1712-1716, 17th Floor, Hopewell Centre, 183 Queen’s Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong, not later than 4:30 p.m. on June 11, 2026, Hong Kong Time. The payment date is expected to be on or around July 6, 2026 for holders of ordinary shares and on or around July 13, 2026 for holders of ADSs.
MARCH QUARTER SUMMARY FINANCIAL RESULTS
| Three months ended March 31, |
|
| |||||
| 2025 |
| 2026 |
|
| |||
| RMB |
| RMB |
| US$ |
| YoY % | |
| (in millions, except percentages and per share amounts) | |||||||
|
|
|
|
| ||||
Revenue | 236,454 |
| 243,380 |
| 35,283 |
| 3% | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Income (Loss) from operations | 28,465(2) |
| (848)(2) |
| (123) |
| N/A | |
Operating margin | 12% |
| 0% |
|
|
|
| |
Adjusted EBITDA(1) | 41,783 |
| 16,435 |
| 2,383 |
| (61)%(2) | |
Adjusted EBITDA margin(1) | 18% |
| 7% |
|
|
|
| |
Adjusted EBITA(1) | 32,616 |
| 5,102 |
| 740 |
| (84)%(2) | |
Adjusted EBITA margin(1) | 14% |
| 2% |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Net income | 11,973 |
| 23,502 |
| 3,407 |
| 96%(3) | |
Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders | 12,382 |
| 25,476 |
| 3,693 |
| 106%(3) | |
Non-GAAP net income(1) | 29,847 |
| 86 |
| 12 |
| (100)%(2) | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Diluted earnings per share(4) | 0.65 |
| 1.30 |
| 0.19 |
| 101%(3)(5) | |
Diluted earnings per ADS(4) | 5.17 |
| 10.36 |
| 1.50 |
| 101%(3)(5) | |
Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share(1)(4) | 1.57 |
| 0.08 |
| 0.01 |
| (95)%(2)(5) | |
Non-GAAP diluted earnings per ADS(1)(4) | 12.52 |
| 0.62 |
| 0.09 |
| (95)%(2)(5) | |
| ____________________ | ||
(1) | See the sections entitled “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” and “Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Measures to the Nearest Comparable U.S. GAAP Measures” for more information about the non-GAAP measures referred to within this results announcement. | |
(2) | The year-over-year decreases were primarily attributable to the investment in technology businesses, quick commerce and user experiences, partly offset by the improved operating results supported by continued growth in customer management service and Cloud business, as well as enhanced operating efficiencies across various businesses. | |
(3) | The year-over-year increases were primarily attributable to the year-over-year increase in net gain from mark-to-market changes of our equity investments, and disposal losses of Sun Art and Intime in the same quarter last year, partly offset by the decrease in adjusted EBITA, while net income attributable to ordinary shareholders and earnings per share/ADS would further take into account the net loss attributable to noncontrolling interests. We excluded non-cash share-based compensation expense, gains/losses of investments, impairment of goodwill and intangible assets, and certain other items from our non-GAAP measurements. | |
(4) | Each ADS represents eight ordinary shares. | |
(5) | The year-over-year percentages as stated are calculated based on the exact amount and there may be minor differences from the year-over-year percentages calculated based on the RMB amounts after rounding. | |
MARCH QUARTER SEGMENT RESULTS
Revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2026 was RMB243,380 million (US$35,283 million), an increase of 3% year-over-year compared to RMB236,454 million in the same quarter of 2025. Excluding revenue from the disposed businesses of Sun Art and Intime, revenue on a like-for-like basis would have grown by 11% year-over-year.
The following table sets forth a breakdown of our revenue by segment for the periods indicated:
| Three months ended March 31, |
| ||||||||||
| 2025 | 2026 |
| |||||||||
| RMB | RMB | US$ | YoY % | ||||||||
| (in millions, except percentages) | |||||||||||
Alibaba China E-commerce Group: |
|
|
|
| ||||||||
E-commerce |
|
|
|
| ||||||||
- Customer management | 72,180 |
| 73,024 |
| 10,586 |
| 1 | % | ||||
- Direct sales, logistics and others(2) | 24,665 |
| 23,268 |
| 3,373 |
| (6 | )% | ||||
| 96,845 |
| 96,292 |
| 13,959 |
| (1 | )% | ||||
Quick commerce(3) | 12,715 |
| 19,988 |
| 2,898 |
| 57 | % | ||||
China commerce wholesale | 5,788 |
| 5,940 |
| 861 |
| 3 | % | ||||
Total Alibaba China E-commerce Group | 115,348 |
| 122,220 |
| 17,718 |
| 6 | % | ||||
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group: |
|
|
|
| ||||||||
International commerce retail | 27,603 |
| 28,917 |
| 4,192 |
| 5 | % | ||||
International commerce wholesale | 5,976 |
| 6,512 |
| 944 |
| 9 | % | ||||
Total Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group | 33,579 |
| 35,429 |
| 5,136 |
| 6 | % | ||||
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
Cloud Intelligence Group | 30,127 |
| 41,626 |
| 6,035 |
| 38 | % | ||||
All others(4) | 83,276 |
| 65,459 |
| 9,490 |
| (21 | )% | ||||
Unallocated | 446 |
| 641 |
| 93 |
|
| |||||
Inter-segment elimination | (26,322 | ) | (21,995 | ) | (3,189 | ) |
| |||||
Consolidated revenue | 236,454 |
| 243,380 |
| 35,283 |
| 3 | % | ||||
| ____________________ | ||
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