Alibaba quarterly revenue soars 41% to $17.5b

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd reported record quarterly revenue on Wednesday with a diverse range of income sources from cloud computing to New Retail shoring up earnings that beat expectations.

The Hangzhou-based company logged 117.28 billion yuan ($17.5 billion) in revenue for the quarter ending in December, up 41 percent year-on-year. This marked the first time that the quarterly revenue of a Chinese internet company passed the 100 billion-yuan mark.

Earnings per share jumped to 12.2 yuan, higher than analysts' estimates of 11.2 yuan polled by Thomson Reuters. Alibaba's shares rallied as much as 6.34 percent on Wednesday to $166.82 in New York trading after the earnings were released.