Tag Archives: bidu

Alibaba Faces SEC Accounting Probe Of Singles Day, More

Alibaba ( BABA ) disclosed Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been probing whether its accounting into its Singles Day e-commerce event and various consolidation practices violate U.S. securities laws. Shares of the e-commerce giant fell 3.9% to 77.96 in morning trade on the stock market today , undercutting the 50-day moving average where Alibaba has found support in recent days. IBD’s Take: How healthy is Alibaba’s stock, and how does it compare vs. key rivals such as Amazon? Find out at IBD Stock Checkup Alibaba reported the SEC probe in an SEC filing. Here is the key passage. “Earlier this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, informed us that it was initiating an investigation into whether there have been any violations of the federal securities laws. The SEC has requested that we voluntarily provide it with documents and information relating to, among other things: our consolidation policies and practices (including our accounting for Cainiao Network as an equity method investee), our policies and practices applicable to related party transactions in general, and our reporting of operating data from Singles Day. We are voluntarily disclosing this SEC request for information and cooperating with the SEC and, through our legal counsel, have been providing the SEC with requested documents and information. The SEC advised us that the initiation of a request for information should not be construed as an indication by the SEC or its staff that any violation of the federal securities laws has occurred. This matter is ongoing, and, as with any regulatory proceeding, we cannot predict when it will be concluded.” Singles Day — Nov. 11 — has become the world’s largest e-commerce event, far above Cyber Monday or the new Amazon ( AMZN ) Prime Day last year. Alibaba had $13.7 billion in sales in last year’s event, with JD.com ( JD ) and other Chinese retailers also taking part. Separately, Alibaba, Baidu ( BIDU ), Tencent ( TCEHY ) and other Chinese Internet companies should should see continued strong growth in online-to-offline spending, Moody’s says. Moody’s sees Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, sometimes referred to as “BAT,” should deliver 15%-30% revenue growth over the next  12-18 months, partly due to O2O efforts that have increased customer engagement and monetization. Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent have spent billions of dollars on O2O-related initiatives in recent years. “For all three companies, we expect that their investments will remain high, as they establish or acquire end-to-end logistics capabilities,” Moody’s said.

Baidu, Tencent May Rule Digital Ads In China, Like Facebook, Google

Baidu ( BIDU ) and Tencent ( TCEHY ) will dominate digital advertising in China, much as Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google and Facebook ( FB ) do in the U.S., says Goldman Sachs. Facebook and Google combined are “implied to represent” around 70% to 80% of the U.S. digital ad market’s dollar growth in 2016 and 2017, Goldman Sachs said in its research report. “ Consistent with the rest of the world, China’s digital advertising continues to take a growing share of total media ad spend,” wrote Goldman analyst Heather Bellini. “China total online spending was $33 billion in 2015, or 45% of total media spending, and is on track to exceed more than half of total ad spend in China in 2016. “Tencent and Baidu, principally the leading social and search engine in China, respectively, contributed 56% of the ad revenue growth among the major Chinese online market companies that are covered by (Goldman Sachs).” Goldman Sachs says the “Seven Pillars” of China’s Internet market are games, online advertising, e-commerce, travel, local services, finance and cloud computing. Tencent, a rival of Alibaba Group ( BABA ), has the dominant gaming platform in China, while Baidu is the search leader. Baidu is ramping up its Internet finance arm and making efforts in autonomous vehicles. Alibaba and Tencent lead in cloud computing. “Social advertising, online video and search will be the three growth drivers for the online advertising industry into 2020,” Goldman Sachs said. “For search, Baidu has demonstrated consistent paid click and cost-per-click trends with market leaders Google and (top Russian search provider)  Yandex ( YNDX ). Baidu looks primed for better mobile monetization as the gap between mobile and desktop cost-per-click narrows. “Given China’s large social media user base, we expect mobile ad spending to become an important theme in advertising. Applying Facebook’s successful social mobile monetization, we believe Tencent could benefit most, given its powerful social asset, Weixin. Online video is the fastest growing vertical and major driver of traffic in China. Baidu-owned  iQiyi, Alibaba’s Youku  and Tencent are the top three players in mobile online video.” In the U.S., meanwhile, the online ad market grew by $23.5 billion in 2015, Goldman Sachs said. Google’s net advertising revenue increased by $6.9 billion, while Facebook’s ad revenue increased by $5.6 billion.

Tesla Partner Nvidia Speeds To Record High On ‘Superhuman’ AI

Nvidia ‘s ( NVDA ) AI technology with Facebook ( FB ), Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ) is powering “superhuman” levels of inference, or artificial intelligence, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said Thursday, after the Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) partner blasted Q1 views on record deep-learning sales. “The truth is that nobody really knows how big this deep-learning market is going to be,” Huang said on the company’s earnings conference call. He referred specifically to gains that customer Microsoft was making with AI and deep learning. “The work that recently was done at Microsoft Research, they’ve achieved superhuman levels of inferencing … of image recognition and voice recognition that’s really kind of hard to imagine,” he said, “and these networks are now huge.” In midday trading on the stock market today , Nvidia stock was up more than 14% and hit an all-time high at 40.30. Main graphics chip rival  Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) was up nearly 3% midday Friday. IBD’s 41-company Electronic Semiconductor-Fabless industry group was up 1.5%. Nvidia late Thursday said its Q1 data center sales, which includes AI, soared 63% year over year to a record $143 million. Nvidia’s chips power IBM ( IBM ) Watson and Facebook’s Big Sur server, Huang said. Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Alibaba ( BABA ), Baidu ( BIDU ) and Twitter ( TWTR ) also use its AI technology. “Twitter has recently said they use Nvidia GPUs (graphics processing units) to help users discover the right content among the millions of images and videos shared every day,” Huang said, adding he can’t imagine a future Internet without deep learning. For Q1, Nvidia reported $1.3 billion in sales and 33 cents earnings per share, up 13% and 38% year over year, respectively. Both metrics topped Wall Street views for $1.26 billion and 32 cents. Nvidia Gaming Gains Seen Ahead Automotive sales grew 43% to $113 million, offsetting weaker growth in Nvidia’s core gaming and professional gaming segments — up a respective 17% to $687 million, and 4% to $189 million. But MKM analyst Ian Ing sees Nvidia’s gaming unit getting a robust refresh in the second-half of the year when it releases its new Pascal GPU, replacing the outmoded Maxwell units. The GPUs will be sold for $699 vs. the Maxwell 980 Ti at $682. “Nvidia continues to be our top pick, given the imminent Pascal gaming refresh and GPUs having unique exposure to a long list of promising applications that are outperforming PCs and smartphone opportunities,” he wrote in a research report. Despite continued headwinds in the PC and smartphone markets, “gaming continues to appear to have macro immunity,” he wrote. Ing reiterated his buy rating on Nvidia stock and boosted his price target to 43 from 39. For the current quarter, Nvidia expects $1.35 billion in sales, plus or minus 2%, up 17% at the midpoint vs. the year-earlier quarter. Rosenblatt analyst Kinngai Chan called the guidance “conservative” despite likely seasonal headwinds and a maturing product line. “We did not see any meaningful market share shifts and continue to see a benign pricing environment,” he wrote in a report.