E-commerce leveled off, Amazon struggled, but Alibaba’s revenue was still up 40%, the SoftBank tycoon was comforted.

One night after the trading session on October 24, billionaire Jeff Bezos suddenly lost the throne of the richest man on the planet. Poor third-quarter earnings led to a sharp drop in Amazon stock, while dragging the billionaire’s net worth to $ 102.8 billion, less than $ 5 billion compared to Bill Gates.

Meanwhile, a fierce competitor, Alibaba, still witnessed a very optimistic business situation. The company founded by billionaire Jack Ma continues to challenge the trade tensions, the cooling economy and the slowdown of e-commerce when sales increased by 40% in the third quarter.

Specifically, on November 1, the company announced better-than-expected revenue, reaching 119 billion yuan ($ 16.9 billion) over a three-month period. As a result, Alibaba’s shares soared by 3% in morning trading.

Areas outside the giant’s traditional business, primarily new retail initiatives such as Freshippo, are now contributing nearly half of the growth in the core commerce segment. core.

Cloud computing segment also grew 64%, revenue reached 9.3 billion yuan. In addition, the acquisition of equity of associate company Ant Financial in September brought the company $ 9.7 billion in revenue.

This result would be a great comfort for SoftBank Group – a major shareholder of Alibaba, after causing investors to lose confidence from the scandal and the WeWork crisis. Group of Japanese tycoon Son Masayoshi is expected to announce first half of 2019 business results next week.

In the third-quarter earnings report on Friday, Alibaba executives also mentioned new efforts aimed at live streaming, where individuals, who have the livestream influence on Taobao Live or multiple platforms. Other platforms, are becoming a new selling trend.

Daniel Zhang, Jack Ma’s successor, has declared a five-year vision, including the goal of bringing the total revenue from 5.7 trillion yuan in fiscal 2018 to the 10 trillion yuan milestone by 2024. .

“We are identifying and implementing new initiatives to convert users from businesses in the retail market to local users and digital entertainment platforms,” Zhang said. ” Alibaba is operating the food delivery platform Ele.me and the video site Youku.”

Cross-border business is also an important part of the company’s expansion. Revenue from Lazada, an online retail platform serving Southeast Asia, increased more than twice in the fourth consecutive quarter.

In September, Alibaba acquired e-commerce platform that imported Kaola goods from NetEase, in order to meet the growing consumer demand of Chinese people for foreign goods.

This positive business result was announced just before the Single Day, the company’s annual shopping event will take place on 11/11. Last year, 30 billion dollars of goods were sold within 24 hours of the festival.

This year, starring Taylor Swift, the event is expected to be even more exciting and help Alibaba set a new revenue record.