Citigroup maintains a "Buy" rating on Alibaba with a target price of 199 yuan

Citi published a research report indicating that the bank will hold the "2026 Innovation Pioneer Enterprise Day" event on April 1st, inviting Alibaba (09988.HK) management to participate in the meeting. The focus of the meeting will include discussions on AI and cloud strategy, recent price increases and the cloud market landscape, drivers for cloud margin improvement, updates on instant retail, and the application of AI in e-commerce. The bank believes that with its full-stack capabilities, Alibaba has the strongest AI competitive advantage in the Chinese internet sector. Although competition in food delivery and instant retail remains fierce, the bank expects related business losses to narrow quarter by quarter.

The bank quoted Alibaba's management stating that the group's key differentiation in the AI field lies in its comprehensive full-stack capabilities, a strong ecosystem, and vertically integrated AI infrastructure covering hardware, platforms, and applications. This integration helps achieve a faster and more efficient monetization cycle from token generation and distribution to final commercialization. Management expects that revenue from Model as a Service (MaaS) will be a major driver in achieving the group's five-year revenue target of $100 billion.

The bank set a target price of $200 for Alibaba (BABA.US) in the US stock market and a target price of HKD 199 for its H shares, maintaining a "Buy" rating