Alibaba revenues miss expectations

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has missed revenue expectations, reporting its slowest quarterly growth in three years.

Revenue was $3.2bn (£2.05bn), up 28% compared with last year, but lower than analysts' expectations of $3.39bn.

The company also saw sales volume increase by 34%.

Alibaba earlier announced that it will invest $4.6bn in a 19.99% stake in China's largest physical electronics retailer, Suning.

Shares in the company dropped almost 7% on the news.

Retail analyst Neil Saunders at Conlumino pointed out that Alibaba's revenue growth over the past financial year was 39%, and reached 59% in the year before that: "This is not to infer criticism of Alibaba, but it does suggest that its core Chinese business has now reached a level of maturity that will dampen future growth rates."

Alibaba, founded by prolific entrepreneur Jack Ma, also reported a jump in revenue from people buying on mobile phone and tablet devices.

The business also owns China's largest online shop, Taobao.com.

Alibaba Group's chief financial officer Maggie Wu said: "We made significant progress monetising our mobile traffic, with our mobile revenue exceeding 50% of our total China commerce retail revenue for the first time."