Alibaba quarterly revenue rises 61 percent

(Reuters) - China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd reported a better-than-expected 61 percent rise in fourth-quarter revenue on Friday, driven by steady sales in its core ecommerce and cloud computing businesses.

Revenue was 61.9 billion yuan ($9.73 billion) in the reported quarter, compared with the average analyst estimate of 58.9 billion yuan, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net income attributable to shareholders, however, fell 29 percent to 7.56 billion yuan.

The March quarter is seasonally slow for Alibaba following its bumper sale event, Singles' Day, in November.

($1 = 6.3596 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru and Cate Cadell in Beijing; Editing by Anil D'Silva)