By Yelin Mo and Sameer B Kulkarni
(Reuters) -Didi Global, China's largest ride-hailing company, on Monday reported its first quarterly profit since 2021, adding to signs of its comeback from regulatory challenges as domestic demand for mobility services continues to recover.
Didi Global reported net income attributable to shareholders of 107 million yuan ($14.66 million) in the three-month period ended Sept. 30, versus a loss of 2 billion yuan a year ago. Revenue in the reported quarter jumped 25% to 51.40 billion yuan.
The ride-hailing firm, which is backed by Alibaba, Tencent and SoftBank Group, did not report its quarterly results in 2022, but recorded an annual net loss of 23.78 billion yuan.
The company on Monday announced plans to repurchase up to $1 billion shares over the next 24 months and said it will boost marketing to aid further business growth.
Didi in 2021 came into the crosshairs of China's cyberspace regulator for pursuing a U.S. stock listing without an approval. This led to a regulatory investigation into the firm that barred it from signing up new users and caused dozens of its apps to be banned from major app stores.
The company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange last year.
Didi was fined $1.2 billion in July 2022 over data-security breaches, but began to emerge from these regulatory troubles in January after it was allowed to restore its apps.
The company has also taken steps to streamline its business operations and focus on its core ride-hailing services. In August, the company announced it would sell its electric vehicle business unit to leading Chinese electric vehicle startup Xpeng for up to $744 million.
"In the future, we expect to continue expanding our core businesses while enhancing our product and service capabilities in order to provide better services to our consumers, drivers and ecosystem partners," Didi Chairman and CEO Wei Cheng said in a statement.
($1 = 7.2963 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Yelin Mo in Beijing and Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Kim Coghill and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
