shares of alibaba health information technology ltd rose strongly after it swung to a profit in its fiscal first half alibaba healths hong konglisted stock gained 92 to 607 hong kong dollars us078 on tuesday paring yeartodate losses to 79 the stock outperformed the hang seng tech indexs 47 rise and the benchmark hang seng indexs 35 increase the company said late monday that it achieved a turnaround in its first half ended sept 30 posting a net profit of 1607 million yuan us223 million compared with a net loss of cny2318 million a year earlier revenue for the period increased 23 from the yearearlier period to cny1150 billion driven by its pharmaceutical direct sales business which grew 24 it said gross profit margin for that segment improved thanks to stronger bargaining and digitalmarketing capabilities although overall gross profit margin was flat at 20 alibaba health said the company said its pharmaceutical ecommerce platform served 27000 merchants at the end of the period up by 2000 from a year earlier while annual active consumers of its direct online stores rose more than 30 million to above 120 million over the same period