Weekly Earnings Recap: Alibaba and Sea TumbleAfter Their Financial Results

$Alibaba(BABA.US)$ said its fourth-quarter revenue rose by 2%, missing estimates by some analysts. Citi analysts pointed to the company's plans to increase spending to strengthen its market position in international e-commerce operations and plans to offer price discounts for cloud services as potentially squeezing margins in coming quarters, though these plans are "important for long-term success." Analysts are also parsing the company's announcement Thursday to spin off and separately list several business groups, including its logistics operations, grocery chain and AliCloud, its cloud-intelligence group. Nomura analysts called the plan "bold and puzzling." Hong Kong shares were recently 5.4% lower, matching the percentage decline for ADRs overnight.

Shares of $Sea(SE.US)$ plunged at the time of writing after it reported earnings for its first quarter of Fiscal Year 2023. Earnings per share came in at $0.16, which missed analysts' consensus estimate of $0.68 per share. Sales increased by 4.9% year-over-year, with revenue hitting $3.04 billion. This was above expectations of $3.035 billion.

The Chinese tech giant $Tencent(TCEHY.US)$ on Wednesday said its first-quarter net profit rose 10% to 25.84 billion yuan ($3.69 billion). That compared with an expectation of CNY29.93 billion, according to a FactSet poll of analysts. They were particularly optimistic about Tencent's core gaming business. The segment's revenue came in 11% above Citi's estimates.

Shares of $Walmart(WMT.US)$ rose after the world's largest retailer by sales posted a 7.4% first-quarter leap in U.S. same-store sales, as it captured market share from rivals and passed on higher costs to customers. The retailer's outlook was more muted, however, according to one strategist. "Walmart are saying consumer health might not be awesome, might just be waning a little bit," said JJ Kinahan, chief executive of IG North America, and president of its brokerage tastytrade.