Investing.com -- Alibaba shares dipped around 4% in U.S. premarket trading Thursday after the Chinese e-commerce and cloud giant reported second-quarter earnings well below analyst expectations.

The company reported second-quarter earnings per share of RMB8.52, missing the analyst estimate of RMB10.72. Revenue for the quarter increased by 9% year-over-year to RMB268.95 billion, just ahead of the RMB268.34 billion consensus estimate.

Revenue from AI Cloud and Compute Services reached RMB48.4 billion, with year-over-year growth accelerating to 45%, driven by rising adoption of AI-related products. AI-related product revenue rose to RMB12.4 billion, marking a twelfth consecutive quarter of triple-digit year-over-year growth.

“We delivered a strong quarter, driven by the improving commercialization of our full‑stack AI capabilities,” said Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group. “Alibaba Cloud’s external revenue growth accelerated to 45%, with AI-related product revenue delivering triple-digit growth for the twelfth consecutive quarter.

"Cloud segment revenue growth continued to accelerate, with quality earnings and operating leverage increasing EBITA margin to 12%," said Toby Xu, chief financial officer at Alibaba.

Within China-ecommerce, customer management revenue fell 7% year-over-year to RMB89.12 billion. On a like-for-like basis, excluding the contra revenue impact from a new business development program, it would have grown 1%.

Total Alibaba Group e-commerce revenue rose 4% to RMB205.9 billion.

Adjusted EBITA fell 30% year-over-year to RMB27.3 billion, with the adjusted EBITA margin shrinking to 10% from 16%. The company attributed the decline primarily to increased investment in technology, partly offset by improved operating results in its cloud business and enhanced operating efficiency across other segments.