Australia's S&P/ASX 200 closed up 22.30 points, or 0.25%, at 9,076.10 on Thursday, Aug. 20.

Alibaba (09988.HK) reported quarterly results for the period ended June 30, 2026. AI cloud and compute services revenue was RMB 48.437 bln. Total revenue and external-customer revenue both accelerated to 45% YoY. AI-related product revenue reached RMB 12.376 bln, marking a twelfth consecutive quarter of triple-digit YoY growth. Company cited rising adoption of its full-stack AI capabilities — AI agents, models, AI cloud infrastructure and orchestration software for heterogeneous chip clusters, including in-house chips — as the growth driver. Omdia’s 2025 China AI cloud market-share report shows Alibaba Cloud with a 38.1% share, the largest in China.

US 30-year Treasury yield fell 10bp intraday to 5.18%.