Alibaba shares rebounded 1.1% in premarket trading on Friday.

Alibaba on Thursday ‌reported a 1.7% rise in third-quarter revenue but a 66.3% drop in net income, both below analysts' estimates, as heavy spending on one-hour delivery and promotions during peak shopping periods failed to spur demand.

U.S.-listed shares of Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company, dropped more than 7% after it ​booked revenue of 284.84 billion yuan ($41.28 billion) for the three months through December, versus LSEG estimates of a 3.7% rise.

The ​company reported an adjusted profit of 7.09 yuan per American Depository Share, well short of 11.64 ⁠yuan estimates.

Cloud revenue outpaced expectations with growth of 36%, as Alibaba rolled out numerous AI agent integrations ​for the consumer-facing side of its business and scaled investments.

AI monetisation is in focus as major tech firms in China and ​beyond wrestle with how to make the era-defining technology profitable.

This week, Alibaba said it would separate its AI businesses from its cloud computing arm.

The newly formed Alibaba Token Hub business group, led by CEO Eddie Wu, is the company's clearest sign yet that it is shifting its focus to digital assistants ​powered by AI models that consume far more tokens - data units models use to generate language - than traditional Q&A chatbots.

At the end ​of last year, a prolonged ⁠property crisis, coupled with concerns about income stability, continued to weigh on consumer sentiment, limiting spending even during traditional periods of high expenditure.

Singles' Day sales in November extended to more than a month ​of promotions, but drew muted response.

Retailers ramped up discounts and subsidies to encourage spending, but ​cautious consumers and ⁠year-round deals diluted the event's traditional sales surge.

Heavy spending by the likes of Alibaba and JD.com on discounts and faster delivery to capture market share from food-delivery leader Meituan pressured profit margins.

Alibaba has said its focus in upcoming quarters will be to improve unit economics for ⁠its Taobao ​Quick Commerce division.

Executives reiterated on Thursday a target of achieving 1 trillion yuan ​gross merchandise volume - a commonly used metric for e-commerce sales - and said the business would be profitable in fiscal year 2029.