Alibaba Group Holding Ltd hailed an “outstanding quarter” yesterday as the Chinese firm beat forecasts with a 61 per cent revenue rise driven by continuing e-commerce growth.

The strong beat underlines Alibaba’s dominant role in China’s fast growing e-commerce market, which Goldman Sachs estimates will grow to $1.7 trillion by 2020.

The firm controlled by billionaire entrepreneur Jack Ma is also expanding into markets like entertainment and sports.

Alibaba chief executive Daniel Zhang said in a filing that a recent push to integrate its traditional online platforms with more offline services and bricks-and-mortar stores, had contributed to the growth.

The e-commerce giant reported revenue of 55.12 billion yuan (€7.05 billion) for July-September, above a 52.2 billion yuan forecast from analysts polled by Reuters. Its net income attributable to shareholders more than doubled from a year ago, rising 132 percent to 17.7 billion yuan. Analysts had forecast a roughly 50 per cent rise.

Alibaba also raised its revenue guidance for the 2018 fiscal year to growth of between 49 percent to 53 per cent, from between 45 per cent to 49 per cent previously, due to the recent consolidation of its logistics network Cainiao. The second quarter can be slower for Alibaba as it prepares for the annual blockbuster Singles’ Day event on November 11, a sales bonanza that shifts more goods than the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales days in the United States combined.

Alibaba, whose Tmall and Taobao shopping platforms dominate online retail in China, saw revenues from its core e-commerce business hit 46.46 billion yuan, a 63 per cent rise from the same quarter a year earlier.

Revenue from Alibaba’s fast-growing cloud computing business was three billion yuan, up 99 per cent but slowing from a 130 per cent rise a year earlier.