Why Alibaba (BABA) Stock Is Gaining Ground Today

China-based tech giant Alibaba (BABA) is climbing 5% today after investment bank Jefferies increased its price target on BABA.

Why Jefferies Has Become More Bullish on BABA

The investment bank raised its price target on the shares to $150 from $144. The firm’s price target is well above the $118 level at which the name is currently trading.

A data analyst in a lab monitoring a cloud-based software system to detect cardiac disease.

Jefferies noted that Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen AI system now powers a large percentage of the leading open-source large language models. Moreover, the latest version of Qwen performed better than expected in a number of benchmarks, the investment bank reported.

Jefferies now values BABA’s cloud business at four times its revenue or about $60 billion, up from its previous estimate of three times the unit’s sales or $45 billion. And according to the investment bank, the unit’s outlook is favorable.

Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating on BABA stock.

More Information About BABA

BABA is partnering with Apple (AAPL) in order to add AI features to iPhones in China, The Information reported yesterday.

Citron Research, a well-known U.S. investor, recently praised Qwen, saying that its enterprise applications are “still overlooked.”

In the last five trading days, BABA has climbed 20%, while the shares have advanced 44% in the last month.

While we acknowledge the potential of BABA, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than BABA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.