- With a market cap of $233.9B as of today's close, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) is the 4th-most valuable tech company on the planet, behind only Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Nonetheless, many on the Street have argued shares are fairly valued or undervalued.
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Cantor, which started coverage with a Buy and $90 target earlier this week: "We believe that a differentiated pricing model, strong brand, and unmatched scale give Alibaba an unfair competitive advantage relative to peers ... While the stock's not cheap, we believe the company's outsized growth and margin profiles, if sustained, should support higher valuation over time."
- Wedbush, whose $80 target has already been surpassed, thinks "Chinese e-commerce appears to have room to grow at 30%+ for several years." CRT Capital's $95 target implies a multiple of 26x 2016E EPS, something it considers justified given a 35%+ revenue CAGR is forecast for 2014-2017.
- On SA, Triton Research observes Alibaba's 2013 marketplace revenue as a % of GMV (3.1%) was a tiny fraction of eBay's (19.3%), leaving plenty of room for growth even if eBay-like monetization isn't feasible in China.
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Value Record is more cautious, viewing Alibaba's VIE legal structure as a risk and questioning how successful its international expansion plans will be - Baidu and many other Chinese Web names have had a rough time trying to replicate their domestic success.
- Yahoo (YHOO -2.7%) closed lower, albeit off the day's lows. With shorts having trouble borrowing Alibaba shares, some may have settled for shorting Yahoo instead.
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Josh Brown thinks Yahoo's pending IPO windfall and large remaining Alibaba stake once more make it a prime target for an activist. "There is absolutely no way, in my opinion, they're going to allow this management team, this board of directors to take $6 billion, do a buyback and then have another free $6 billion in cash to experiment."