Latest news with #KimberleyKao
Wall Street Journal
15-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Singapore Airlines Posts Another Record Annual Profit, But Flags Trade Risks
Singapore Airlines' C6L 0.29%increase; green up pointing triangle annual profit climbed to a new high, though it flagged that tariffs and trade uncertainty cloud the outlook for the airline industry. The city-state's flag carrier said Thursday that net profit rose 3.9% to a record 2.78 billion Singapore dollars, equivalent to US$2.14 billion, for the year ended March. Profit was boosted by a one-off noncash accounting gain of S$1.1 billion from the Air India-Vistara merger, which was completed in November. Revenue rose 2.8% to S$19.54 billion. Operating profit fell 37% to S$1.71 billion on softer yields, pressured by intensifying competition from rival carriers adding capacity, but Singapore Airlines said this was partly mitigated by the record number of passengers it carrier during the period. Singapore Airlines and its low-cost carrier Scoot carried a record 39.4 million passengers in total, up 8.1% from the prior year. Looking ahead, Singapore Airlines said the 'industry faces a challenging operating environment amid changing tariff policies and trade tensions, economic and geopolitical uncertainties, and continued supply chain constraints.' These factors could affect consumer and business confidence, which in turn could weigh on passenger and cargo markets, it said. 'While global uncertainties remain, the group is in a strong position to focus on profitability, while pursuing growth opportunities and ensuring long-term value creation for shareholders,' the airline said. Write to Kimberley Kao at
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What Wall Street experts are saying about Alibaba ahead of earnings
Alibaba Group (BABA) is scheduled to report results of its fiscal third quarter of FY24 before the U.S. market opens on Thursday, February 20, and will hold a conference call to discuss the results at 7:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time the same day. What to watch for: See what stocks are receiving strong buy ratings from top-rated analysts. Filter, analyze, and streamline your search for investment opportunities with TipRanks' Stock Screener. EXPECTATIONS: Current consensus adjusted EPS and revenue forecasts for Alibaba's December-end quarter stand at $2.64 and $38.23B, respectively, according to data from Bloomberg. AI: Along with its last earnings report, Alibaba said growth in its Cloud business accelerated from prior quarters, with revenues from public cloud products growing in double digits and AI-related product revenue delivering triple-digit growth. 'We are more confident in our core businesses than ever and will continue to invest in supporting long-term growth,' added Eddie Wu, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group. In late January, Alibaba debuted the latest iteration of its artificial intelligence model, 'claiming it surpasses DeepSeek's AI model across various benchmarks,' wrote The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Kao. 'The company stated that Qwen2.5 Max 'achieves competitive performance against the top-tier models,' referencing OpenAI's GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Meta's Llama-3.1-405B, based on its compiled comparison using various benchmark tests,' noted the WSJ story. Afterward, Goldman Sachs reiterated a Buy rating and $117 price target on Alibaba, noting that after three different Chinese AI model launches, Alibaba Cloud announced the launch of its latest multi-modal vision-language model Qwen2.5-VL, which is open source, just like DeepSeek's Janus-Pro. The firm believes increasingly agile Chinese models and significant improvement in computing cost efficiencies could drive further room for wider adoption/exploration/proliferation of AI applications and potential for further global expansion for Chinese players. Goldman added that the stock's then-current market cap had already priced in the unfavorable e-commerce competition. The buzz around DeepSeek, a Chinese-built large-language open-source model that claims to rival offerings from OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta Platforms (META) but using a much smaller budget, sent several technology stocks tumbling on January 27. DeepSeek's new AI model was being praised for being cost-effective and capable of running on less-advanced chips, which raised questions about the high valuations of companies like Nvidia (NVDA). Jefferies views DeepSeek's launch 'as part of an ongoing evolution, not revolution' and called the selloff in software stocks 'largely overdone.' Innovations which continue to drive increasing efficiency at inference, but also training, will further improve the return on investment of artificial intelligence, leading to faster software adoption, the analyst argued. Inference efficiency is part of an ongoing trend with DeepSeek and not as incremental as some lead to believe, according to Jefferies. On February 7, Alibaba denied reports that the company plans to invest in DeepSeek, a Chinese-built large-language open-source model that claims to rival offerings from Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta Platforms but using a much smaller budget, Reuters' Brenda Goh reported. Citing Chinese news outlet The Paper, Goh said that Yan Qiao, a vice president at Alibaba, wrote on her personal WeChat feed that 'as a fellow Chinese and Hangzhou company, we applaud DeepSeek, but news circulating that Alibaba will invest in DeepSeek is fake news.' Previous reports indicated Alibaba planned to invest $1B into DeepSeek. On February 10, after speaking with more than 100 investors over preceding few days, JPMorgan analyst Alex Yao said he sensed an 'increasingly positive' sentiment on Alibaba shares, which the firm says was evidenced by a 13% share price rally in the prior five trading days. However, there are still mixed views and positions on the stock, which indicates 'room for share price movement on both sides,' the analyst told investors at that time. JPMorgan believes investors are divided on the potential upside from Alibaba's artificial intelligence initiatives and cloud business. The firm thinks demonstrating a concrete plan for monetizing AI capabilities 'could alleviate investor concerns about the sustainability of the current rally.' JPMorgan has an Overweight rating on Alibaba with a $125 price target. APPLE PACT: Earlier this month, Reuters' Casey Hall reported that Alibaba will partner with Apple (AAPL) to support iPhones' AI services offering in China, citing confirmation from the Chinese company's chairman. For Alibaba, the partnership is a major win in China's competitive AI market that is home to DeepSeek, which made headlines this year with models developed at a fraction of the cost of Western rivals, the author noted. The landmark deal also resolves months of speculation over Apple's AI strategy in the region as the iPhone maker had been in talks with Chinese tech leaders including Baidu (BIDU), ByteDance and Tencent (TCEHY), Reuters and the Information have reported. After The Information initially reported that Apple partnered with Alibaba to bring Apple Intelligence features to iPhone users in China, Morgan Stanley said that the firm views the pact as 'a critical catalyst for Apple's competitive standing in China.' While acknowledging having no knowledge of Apple's internal decisions, Alibaba is the largest e-commerce player in China, so it could have 'a treasure trove of data that Apple could look to leverage in delivering personalized GenAI features to Chinese consumers,' says the analyst, who adds that the firm could also see a scenario where Apple creates an initial AI partnership with Alibaba that eventually expands to other local Chinese cloud players over time. Meanwhile, BofA analyst Wamsi Mohan noted that Apple's smartphone share has been pressured in China, and while it was announced last year that Apple was partnering with Baidu for AI in China, Apple ended the project because Baidu's models developed for Apple Intelligence were not up to Apple's standards. The Alibaba partnership news shows Apple's desire to swiftly launch AI features in China, BofA says. SENTIMENT: Among analysts tracked by Bloomberg that have updated their views on Alibaba within the last twelve months, 41 have Buy or equivalent ratings, eight have Hold or equivalent ratings and only one has a Sell or equivalent rating. The average twelve month price target of 30 of those analysts is $124.32. Check out recent Media Buzz Sentiment on Alibaba as measured by TipRanks. Published first on TheFly – the ultimate source for real-time, market-moving breaking financial news. Try Now>> See today's best-performing stocks on TipRanks >> Read More on BABA: Alibaba price target raised to $125 from $110 at Baird Alibaba (BABA) Shares Climb after Xi Tells Tech Titans He Will Help Them Be 'Competitive' Looking for Exposure to RGTI Stock? Try These Two ETFs BIDU Earnings: Baidu Revenues Slide Less than Expected as AI Rivalry Intensifies Alibaba (BABA) Will Report Earnings This Week. Here Is What to Expect
