China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group posted strong first quarter earnings on Wednesday, showing a net income that has tripled from $220 million in 2012 to hit $669 million this year.

According to data from Yahoo!, which owns 24 percent of the ­Hangzhou-based e-commerce company's shares, Alibaba has made $1.38 billion of revenue in its first quarter this year, a 71 percent jump from $806 million in the same quarter last year.

Analysts reached by the Global Times on Wednesday said that the robust earnings will lend confidence to potential investors, as Alibaba has been gearing up to an IPO in New York or Hong Kong.

The company also reported a 232 percent surge in income from operations, which reached $709 million this year compared with $213 million in 2012.

Alibaba, which owns popular online shopping site taobao.com, posted a 171.1 percent jump in net profit and an 84 percent surge in revenue in its 2012 fourth quarter ending in December. Analysts said that the company's growth is likely to be sustained.

"The company has a strong brand and a large base of clients. As long as it puts more effort into helping its supplier clients in negotiating and signing deals, it will make more profits and continue reporting excellent earnings," said Wang Tingting, an industry analyst from Beijing-based Internet market research institute iResearch.

Wang said that Alibaba has seen healthy earnings because e-­commerce is booming in China.

"The robust e-commerce scene is bringing Alibaba more buyers and suppliers, who are boosting the number of transactions as well as increasing the company's advertising revenue," Wang said.

Fu Liang, an independent industry analyst, told the Global Times Wednesday that Alibaba was also able to triple its year-on-year net profit growth because it failed to perform well in the first quarter of 2012.

"Thanks to Taobao's Tmall arm, whose sales and popularity soared last fall and winter, Alibaba's performance has returned to a high level," Fu said.

While many Taobao shops sell knockoffs and crudely made products, Tmall, established in early 2012, sells goods that are guaranteed to be authentic and of high quality.

Tmall reportedly made 10 billion yuan in sales within the first 13 hours of last year's "Singles Day" on November 11.

Both analysts said that Alibaba ­faces the challenge of finding the best way to attract wealthy individuals and institutions to invest in its upcoming IPO.

While Fu said that the firm needs to fix Taobao's bad reputation as a seller of fake products, Wang said it should devise a way to sustain its rapid growth even as the company is getting bigger.