Serving the nation’s middle-class shoppers, however, still seems to be rollicking good business.

Profits for April to June fell by more than 40 percent, however, reflecting the effect of a large increase in the valuation of Ant Financial, an Alibaba sister company. Because Ant shares are included in the pay of some Alibaba employees, Alibaba’s compensation expenses grew sizably.

Had that not been the case, the company said, profits would have grown by more than a third.

Alibaba is already among the world’s largest and most influential forces in digital retail. But it is setting its sights on providing technology to enable all commerce, whether online or off, along with logistics and marketing. Thursday’s strong results suggest that the company’s empire building has not dented the current core of its business: selling ads to the merchants on its shopping platforms.

“This model is kind of unique,” said Jialong Shi, an analyst in Hong Kong with the investment bank Nomura. “If the macro slowdown is to take a toll on the overall retail business, Alibaba should, on the back of this unique marketplace model, fare relatively better.”

Many Chinese internet companies have been in choppy waters recently.

Alibaba’s share price has swung too, as the company invests to broaden its reach in the brick-and-mortar world. It is opening its own supermarkets and modernizing mom-and-pop stores. It is teaming up with Starbucks to deliver Frappuccinos.

The more different realms of consumer life in which Alibaba has a hand, the more data it can amass on how consumers spend, and on what they want. That makes Alibaba’s platforms more useful to vendors, which in turn helps the company sell more ads and services to those merchants.

But all that spending for the future has eaten somewhat into Alibaba’s profits in the present. And the uncertainty confronting China’s economy could still mean that the company’s sales growth hits stumbles.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Raymond Zhong © 2018 The New York Times