Alibaba shares jump, Amazon’s revenue beats Walmart

Chinese tech titan Alibaba posted a startling 239% year-over-year jump in net profit in the final quarter of 2024. CEO Eddie Wu attributed that shiny result to growth in the company’s cloud business and its triple-digit expansion in artificial intelligence during the past six quarters, though increasing retail sales also played a part.

Amazon, like Alibaba, wears dual hats of retailer and cloud provider. The company’s retail unit is its biggest moneymaker — but revenue is also fueled by its cloud computing services. In late 2024, Amazon’s quarterly revenue surpassed Walmart’s for the first time, in an indication that tech conglomerate is making inroads into more parts of the economy.

Walmart, however, is still expected to be the world’s largest annual revenue generator — for now.

U.S. markets retreat from records
U.S. markets dropped Thursday. The S&P 500 was down 0.43%, retreating from recent highs and putting it in the red for the week thus far. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.01% and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.47%. Asia-Pacific stocks climbed Friday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index popped more than 3.4% to its highest level since February 2022, on the back of Alibaba shares surging. Japan’s Nikkei 225 added around 0.2% amid sustained consumer price growth.

Sustained inflation in Japan
Japan’s inflation rate in January climbed to 4% year on year, hitting its highest level since January 2023. Core inflation — which excludes prices of fresh food — rose to 3.2%, beating economists’ expectations of 3.1%, according to a Reuters poll. This figure was the highest since June 2023. The headline inflation has remained above the Bank of Japan’s 2% target for 34 straight months.

Alibaba shares pop on cloud growth
Alibaba shot up 8.1% in U.S. on Thursday and jumped as much as 12% in Hong Kong on Friday. The Chinese tech giant on Thursday reported net income of 48.945 billion yuan ($6.72 billion) in the December quarter, a 239% surge from a year ago. Alibaba’s top line was also better than expected, lifted by 13% year-on-year sales growth in its Cloud Intelligence Group during the quarter. Separately, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen increased his personal stake in Alibaba to around $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Amazon’s quarterly revenue beats Walmart’s
Amazon has dethroned Walmart in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. Amazon said earlier this month that it brought in $187.8 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter — above the $180.5 billion reported by Walmart on Thursday. Since 2012, Walmart has held the distinction of being the top revenue generator each quarter, a title it gained after overtaking oil giant Exxon Mobil.

Taking Thames private
Private equity investor KKR is offering about £4 billion ($5 billion) for U.K.’s struggling Thames Water utility, according to a person familiar with the matter. The water utility firm is saddled with ballooning debt and has warned it will run out of cash by March 24. KKR’s involvement would comprise a £4 billion management-buyout submission that would not result in the sale of assets or a breakup of the utility, the source said.

[PRO] Behind Thursday’s sell-off
Walmart, as the U.S.’ largest retailer and generator of revenue, serves as a bellwether for consumer health. So when the company said it expects profit growth to slow this fiscal year, investors took notice and sold off shares. Here’s what analysts think of the dip in markets on Thursday.

Moscow loathed the U.S. for years as its economy paid a high price for war — now, it’s doing a U-turn

Since invading Ukraine three years ago, Russia has spent a significant amount of energy demonizing the U.S. and denigrating the country. But the arrival of a friendlier administration under U.S. President Donald Trump, which kickstarted fledgling talks to end the conflict in Ukraine — as well as a way in from the economic and geopolitical cold — are prompting a softening of the Kremlin’s adversarial stance.

As tensions between Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spilled into open acrimony on Wednesday, with Trump calling Zelenskyy a “dictator,” Putin praised Trump for showing restraint amid what he described as “hysteria” by European leaders who are angry at being left out of negotiations on Ukraine’s future.