Can Alibaba Continue to Impress When It Reports Thursday Morning?

By Chris Lange Published Feb 12, 12:15PM EST

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Can Alibaba Continue to Impress When It Reports Thursday Morning? — © alibabagroup.com

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE: BABA | BABA Price Prediction) is set to report its fiscal third-quarter earnings results before the markets open on Thursday. The consensus estimates are calling for $2.22 in earnings per share (EPS) and $22.46 billion in revenue. The same period of last year reportedly had EPS of $1.81 on $17.06 billion in revenue.

Alibaba is the top online seller of everything in China and Asia, and the company has largely become China’s most valuable company, with a market cap of some $609 billion or so. It is also now one of the largest companies in the world. While it has been public in the United States on the New York Stock Exchange for about five years, the company entered the Hong Kong Stock Exchange recently as well, in what was the biggest IPO of 2019.

In November, the company announced record Singles Day sales of a stunning $38 billion. More than half a billion people from a number of countries participated in the event, which is China’s equivalent to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, though Singles Day is much larger. The five-day Black Friday clocked less than $25 billion in sales last year, and Cyber Monday saw less than $8 billion. Alibaba said that it had netted its first $1 billion in sales in just 68 seconds and the first $10 billion in half an hour.

Alibaba has gone beyond e-commerce and developed into a sophisticated new type of conglomerate in the cyber-era, with e-commerce as the base for the rest of the four businesses: logistics, finance, data-computing and cross-border infrastructure. Top analysts, including Raymond James, are still seeing more upside in this stock.

Here’s what a few analysts had to say about Alibaba ahead of the report:

DZ Bank has a Buy rating with a $260 target price.
KeyCorp rates it as Overweight with a $260 target.
Daiwa Capital Markets has a Buy rating.
RBC has a Buy rating and a $240 price target.
Stifel has a Buy rating with a $220 price target.
Macquarie has an Outperform rating.

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Excluding Wednesday’s move, Alibaba stock had outperformed the broad markets with a gain of about 30% in the past 52 weeks. In just the past quarter alone, the share price was up closer to 16%.

Alibaba stock traded up about 3% to $224.06 on Thursday, in a 52-week range of $147.95 to $231.14. The consensus price target is $241.91.

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About the Author Chris Lange →

Chris Lange is a writer for 24/7 Wall St., based in Houston. He has covered financial markets over the past decade with an emphasis on healthcare, tech, and IPOs. During this time, he has published thousands of articles with insightful analysis across these complex fields. Currently, Lange's focus is on military and geopolitical topics.

Lange's work has been quoted or mentioned in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, MSN, Yahoo, The Verge, Vice, The Intelligencer, Quartz, Nasdaq, The Motley Fool, Fox Business, International Business Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Barron’s, Benzinga, and many other major publications.

A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Lange majored in business with a particular focus on investments. He has previous experience in the banking industry and startups.