Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) witnessed a significant increase in short interest in October. As of October 15th, the short interest totaled at 27,349,423 shares, a growth of 33.4% from the September 30th total of 20,495,121 shares. Overall, around 1.1% of the company’s shares are sold short.
Alibaba assigned a Neutral rating by Zacks
Recently, the analysts at Zacks assigned Neutral rating to Alibaba in a research report issued on Thursday, and assigned a price target of $114.00. The price target suggests a potential upside of 4.90% from the company’s current price.
Zacks noted that Alibaba Group for the second-quarter performed lower than they had expected due to an increase investments made in the mobile, marketing and other new ventures. On the other hand, the strong grip of the company in the mobile search market, its quest to develop new products, international growth opportunities and strong financial position are expected to spike the share upwards over time. Zacks does warn of few macro headwinds like ongoing and increasing investments and growing competition from Tencent Holdings and Baidu.
Several other analysts have assigned a rating to the stock recently. RBC Capital analysts increased its price target on the stock from $120.00 to $130.00 in a research note to investors on Wednesday, and assigned an Outperform rating on Alibaba. Evercore Partners also increased their price target to $125.00 in a research note on Wednesday. Separately, the analysts at Jefferies Group raised their price target on Alibaba from $101.80 to $118.00 in a note on Wednesday. Overall, the company has an average rating of Buy and an average target price of $113.70.
Mobile growth in focus
Mobile growth grabbed the most limelight during the earnings call, satisfying both analysts as well as the company. According to Citi analyst Thomas Chong, mobile GMV and Alibaba’s efforts to link overseas brands with Chinese consumers will remain in focus for the year.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) reported mobile revenues of 3.7 billion yuan for its latest quarter, which according to Chong was 25% higher than its estimates. The company’s take rate in mobile improved by 1.87% last quarter compared to 1.49% in the previous year. Alibaba’s finance head Maggie Wu stated that the company believes that mobile take rates will continue to increase, approaching the now higher take rates of desktop.
