China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba posted a sharp decline in profit for its fiscal year end 31 March due to a one-off expense, but mobile revenue more than quadrupled as active mobile users jumped 77 per cent.

The 48 per cent drop in its net profit to CNY2.89 billion ($472 million) was mainly the result of CNY4.63 billion in stock-based compensation paid to executives.

The company yesterday also announced it appointed COO Daniel Zhang as its new CEO, effective Friday. Its current CEO Jonathan Lu, who has been at the helm since 2013, was named as vice chairman. Lu joins Joseph Tsai as vice chairman. Jack Ma remains executive chairman.

The company’s earning per share fell to CNY1.12 from CNY2.37 a year ago — excluding the compensation expense and other items, adjusted earnings per share were CNY3.00 compared to CNY2.80 in Q4 2014.

Revenue expanded 45 per cent year-on-year to CNY17.43 billion – up from 40 per cent in the previous quarter. Mobile revenue surged 352 per cent year-on-year and represented 40 per cent of China retail marketplace revenue compared to 12 per cent a year ago.

Growth of gross merchandise volumes (GMV) in its Chinese marketplace fell to 40 per cent to CNY600 billion from 49 per cent in the previous quarter. Mobile GMV almost tripled and accounted for 51 per cent of GMV, up from 42 per cent in fiscal Q3 and 36 per cent in Q2.

Taobao’s GMV was up 29 per cent, while Tmall’s GMV rose 62 per cent.

Mobile monthly active users jumped 77 per cent from a year ago to 289 million.

Annual active buyers rose 37 per cent year-on-year to 350 million – but was up just 5 per cent quarter-on-quarter.

China retail commerce revenue rose 39 per cent from last year, while international wholesale was up 42 per cent. International retail grew 53 per cent. Its cloud computing and web infrastructure business grew 82 per cent.