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By Tang Guhan

China’s Internet giant Alibaba got a 61-percent surge in revenue to RMB 80.92 billion in the first quarter in its fiscal year of 2019, which was announced in its first-quarter financial report released on Thursday night.

The report shows that the revenue derived from e-commerce division of Alibaba reached RMB 69.188 billion, up by 61 percent. Among other Internet giants worldwide, including Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, collectively known as FANG stocks during the same period, only Alibaba achieved an over 50 percent revenue growth.

Also, it has maintained over a 55-percent increase in its revenue for six successive quarters.

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, and Amortization (EBITA) of Alibaba was RMB 26.502 billion in total, while its EBITA for the e-commerce business increased by 22 percent to RMB 32.797 billion,the reports says.

The annual active consumers of Alibaba reached 576 million, an incremental 20 million each quarter in one year, the report says.

It is notable that the revenue of Alibaba’s New Retailing services, a term created by Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma which conveys a new business retail model that integrates online services and offline shopping experiences leveraged by Big Data and AI technologies, surged by over 340 percentage in last quarter. In addition, the Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of Tmall.com, an important arm of Alibaba’s e-commerce, increased by 34 percent.

Zhang Yong, the CEO of Alibaba, said the retail business maintains a significant growth momentum while the New Retailing division is becoming a new engine for the company’s business expansion in the future.

Alibaba’s New Retailing business includes imports,Alibaba’s grocery stores -- the Hema Fresh stores and Alibaba’s physical stores -- the Intime Department Stores..

Meanwhile, Alibaba is expanding its business overseas rapidly.

Its international retail business sector in this quarter was RMB 4.316 billion, an increase of 64 percent when compared to the same period last year. The growth, according to the report, was attributed to the Southeast Asia e-commerce platform, Lazada, Ali Express as well as Alibaba’s logistics and payment systems’ development.

Alibaba’s investments in talents have hit a record high. And the stock incentive plan for Alibaba’s financial arm, Ant Financial has spent RMB 16.378 billion as of now, the report says.