Asia-Pacific stocks set to rise; Alibaba announces better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings

Asia-Pacific stocks set to rise; Alibaba announces better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings

SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific rose in Friday morning trade, with investors monitoring shares of in Hong Kong after the Chinese tech giant posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday. The in Japan gained 1.41% as shares of conglomerate surged 5%. The Topix index advanced 1.08%. South Korea's also jumped 1.22%. In Australia, the climbed 0.73%. Australia's April retail sales data is set to be out at 9:30 a.m. HK/SIN on Friday. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.49% higher. Chinese tech titan Alibaba reported Thursday fourth-quarter earnings of 7.95 yuan ($1.18) per share, excluding items, on revenues of 204.05 billion yuan ($30.28 billion). That was higher than analyst expectations for earnings of 7.31 yuan a share on CNY199.25 billion in revenue, according to StreetAccount. Overnight on Wall Street, the S&P 500 jumped 1.99% to 4,057.84. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 516.91 points, or 1.61%, to 32,637.19. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperformed as it rose 2.68% to 11,740.65. Currencies and oil The , which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 101.717 — off levels above 102.2 seen earlier in the week. The traded at 126.98 per dollar, still stronger than levels above