Alibaba stocks have nose-dived after the publication of its third quarter results. The company's revenue surged by 40 percent during the three months to $4.22bn (€3.73bn), but analysts were expecting them to hit $4.42bn (€3.9bn).

The company's net profit was down by 28 percent; this was due to a tax change, some one-off expenses and share-based compensation.

The online retail group's stock fell by nearly 9.5 percent.

Alibaba - Yahoo Finance

CEO Jonathan Lu says: "Gross merchandise volume across our China retail marketplaces grew 49 percent year on year, and our annual active buyers increased to 334 million in 2014, an increase of 45 percent year on year."

The company's sales in China alone were $3.4bn (€3bn).

Mr Lu continues: "Our unrivaled leadership and momentum in mobile continued — we added 48 million active users sequentially and delivered over US$1 billion in mobile revenue during the quarter."

Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma started the company from a small apartment in 1999 and is now the richest man in China. When it went public earlier this year Alibaba had a valuation that was higher than Facebook's IPO.