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Stock in Alibaba Group Holding jumped 1.1% on Friday to reach an all-time high, capping a successful year for the Chinese e-commerce giant.

The stock (ticker: BABA) closed at $212.49 per American depositary share, surpassing the peak of $210.86 reached in June 2018. Shares are up 55% year to date and have risen more than 200% from $68 in the 2014 initial public offering.

The numbers point at why. Revenue for the first three quarters of 2019 was 40% higher than in the same period a year earlier. Earnings for the nine months rose 36% year over year to reach $1.83 per depositary share.

On Nov. 11, the date of the Singles Day shopping festival—the bigger, Chinese equivalent of Black Friday—Alibaba set a sales record with gross merchandise volume of $38.4 billion within 24 hours—more than five times the estimated online spending this Black Friday. It took a minute and eight seconds for $1 billion of good to change hands.

Last month, the company raised $13 billion in a second public listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, bringing shares closer to investors at home. Those people are often Alibaba users themselves, and have a much better understanding of the business. The stock is up more than 12% since the Hong Kong listing.

Alibaba’s rally has come despite broad concerns about a softening Chinese economy and the trade war between Washington and Beijing. Chinese consumers have remained resilient and eager to buy, so the outlook for 2020 may be even brighter, given that a “phase one” trade deal is expected to be signed in January.

Alibaba is well positioned to sustain the momentum next year. Although China’s economy is expanding less rapidly, it is still on a tear by the standards of most of the rest of the world. Growth next year is expected to be at about 6%.

Big cities like Beijing and Shanghai are fairly saturated with e-commerce platforms, but Alibaba has already mapped out its next move. The company is investing heavily to penetrate lower-tier cities in China, where consumers still don’t shop as much online as their big-city peers do. Lower pricing and a better logistics network are the keys.

Alibaba is also eyeing international markets, such as Southeast Asia, where the potential for growth is huge.

As Chinese companies adapt to an increasingly digital world, Alibaba aims to help businesses become more efficient and transparent using its big-data and cloud-computing technology. The company’s extensive ecosystem—spanning e-commerce, deliveries, payments, advertising, and content production—offers plenty of opportunities for cross-selling between business segments.

As the year drew to a close, Alibaba reshuffled its executive suite in a series of moves disclosed internally on Thursday. “This organizational upgrade is a strategic step to further unlock synergies across the entire Alibaba digital economy and execute three key strategies of globalization, China domestic consumption and big data powered by cloud computing,” an Alibaba spokesperson told Barron’s.

In an internal letter, CEO Daniel Zhang said that Chief Technology Officer Jeff Zhang will step down to be succeeded by Cheng Li, CTO at Ant Financial, the company’s financial-services arm. Jeff Zhang will keep his other positions and continue to lead the company’s overall technology strategy, according to people familiar with the matter.

At the same time, Jiang Fan, president of Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall e-commerce sites, will take on the responsibility of managing the company’s digital advertising platform, Alimama. Trudy Dai, president of the business-to-business operation, will oversee the new-retail business FreshHippo.

Ant Financial also appointed a new CEO, Simon Hu, to succeed Eric Jing. Jing will remain the executive chairman of Ant Financial and be more focused on the business’s international expansion, according to people familiar with the matter. Already, Ant Financial is forming a new joint venture with U.S. asset manager Vanguard to offer government-approved financial advice to users of its mobile payment platform Alipay.

Citigroup analyst Alicia Yap thinks the organizational changes are consistent with Alibaba’s goals. After stepping down as group CTO, Jeff Zhang will be free from day-to-day responsibilities and able to “take a more strategic position exploring and focusing more on technology research and new breakthroughs in cloud intelligence,” she wrote in a Thursday note.

Putting the e-commerce businesses and advertising unit under the same leadership will also help Alibaba make Alimama a more effective, and more profitable, advertising platform, wrote Yap.

Write to Evie Liu at evie.liu@barrons.com