Inter

Salesforce F3Q26 Quick Interpretation: Overall, Salesforce's financial performance for the quarter was average, with most indicators slightly below market expectations. However, more critical operational metrics such as cRPO and new orders were satisfactory. The more notable aspect was the acceleration in revenue and cRPO growth in the next quarter guidance, boosted by the acquisition of Informatica. Specifically:

1) Total revenue for this quarter increased by 8.6% year-on-year, slowing down by about 1 percentage point compared to the previous quarter, slightly below expectations. Meanwhile, due to the impact of AI investments, the year-on-year increase in gross margin was only 0.3 percentage points, resulting in a gross profit growth rate of only 9%, also slightly below expectations.

As total operating expenses grew by 6.8% year-on-year, without significant acceleration, actual spending was slightly below market expectations, partially offsetting the slowdown in growth for the third quarter. Ultimately, operating profit and free cash flow fell short of expectations. The quarterly financial report performance was evidently not good.

2) Partly due to the low base in the same period last year, this quarter's cRPO (+11% yoy) and new order growth rates accelerated quarter-on-quarter, showing a better trend compared to past performance.

3) The bigger highlight is that the company has guided next quarter's revenue growth to increase to 11%~12%, and cRPO growth to 15%. However, it should be noted that the acceleration is almost entirely due to the benefits of consolidating Informatica and favorable exchange rates.

4) The most watched Agentforce-related business also made steady progress this quarter. Agentforce and Data 360 annualized revenue reached 1.4 billion, up from 1.2 billion last quarter, continuing to rise. Among them, Agentforce contributed annualized revenue of over 500 million, a year-on-year increase of 330%, with user numbers also increasing by 70%. $Salesforce(CRM.US)

Didi 3Q25 Quick Interpretation: In early November, Didi updated the market with guidance on its 3Q performance, mainly mentioning two issues:

1. The investment in the food delivery business in Brazil (to gain a first-mover advantage over Meitu Keeta) will lead to a significant expansion of losses in overseas business; 2. The guidance also indicated that domestic subsidies and other investments would be concentrated in the second half of the year, resulting in a decline in the domestic business's adj. EBITA profit margin compared to the high point in the first half.

As this unfavorable guidance was digested by the market, Didi's stock price subsequently retreated by nearly 20%. The actual performance this quarter was largely in line with the previous guidance, with Bloomberg's consensus expectations being somewhat high due to untimely updates, while major banks have made corresponding adjustments. Therefore, overall, Didi's performance this season was expectedly poor.

Specifically:

1) In terms of core growth indicators, the domestic travel segment's GTV grew by approximately 10% year-on-year, slightly slowing down by about 2 percentage points quarter-on-quarter.

The domestic business growth remains generally stable and largely in line with expectations. Meanwhile, the GTV growth rate of overseas business significantly increased to 31%, reflecting that the overseas investment indeed accelerated business growth, and it was notably higher than Bloomberg's consensus expectations.

2) In terms of profit, the domestic business adj. EBITA profit was 2.98 billion, slightly higher than the November guidance of 2.7-2.8 billion. However, the trend shows that this quarter's profit margin fell significantly from over 4% in the first two quarters of this year (based on GTV) to 3.5% this quarter, indicating a considerable decline.

Dolphin Research preliminarily judges that this is more due to the drag of weakening overall domestic ride-hailing demand (macro factors), while Didi's competitive landscape remains stable or further improved.

3) The overseas business's loss this quarter expanded significantly to nearly 1.8 billion, with the loss rate doubling quarter-on-quarter to 5.6%, which is generally in line with the updated expectations of major banks. As mentioned earlier, this is mainly due to the impact of investment in Brazil's food delivery. $DiDi(DIDIY.US)

Alibaba F2Q26 Quick Interpretation: The two most concerning issues for the market this quarter—losses caused by food delivery and the growth of the cloud business. For the former, our estimates suggest a loss of around 39 billion, which is at the upper end of the company's previous guidance range, making it an expected but unfavorable news.

Meanwhile, the growth rate of cloud business revenue exceeded expectations, accelerating to 34.5%, with the profit margin remaining flat year-on-year, stronger than the already high expectations.

Bloomberg's consensus forecast for this quarter was not updated in time, thus having limited reference value. Dolphin Research will consider the latest expectations from major institutions:

1) The core Taobao and Tmall business's CMR year-on-year growth rate is 10.1%, consistent with last quarter's growth and in line with market expectations. Considering the base period from last September when a 0.6% merchant service fee was added, the performance is still decent, though not surprising.

2) Including food delivery and travel services, the new Taobao and Tmall (domestic e-commerce group) reported an adj. EBITA of 10.5 billion this quarter, with food delivery losses decreasing by 76.5% year-on-year. The latest major institutions' expectations range from about 7.5 to 10 billion, with actual performance at the upper end of expectations, not as concerning as feared.

3) Another key indicator, Alibaba Cloud's revenue grew by 34.5% year-on-year this quarter, stronger than the market expectation which had been raised to over 30%, making it the most unexpected point of this performance.

However, after excluding internal demand from the group, Alibaba Cloud's growth rate accelerated by 3 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, not as strong as it appears overall. In other words, this quarter, Alibaba's internal demand for cloud services was also stronger.

4) The International E-commerce Group's revenue grew by about 10% this quarter, continuing to slow down significantly. However, the corresponding adj. EBITA for this quarter has already turned positive to 160 million, aligning with the previous shift towards refined operations to improve limited profitability. (Too much investment in food delivery and cloud, indeed leaving no room for overseas business investment).

5) All other bundled businesses reported a loss this quarter, expanding significantly from over 1 billion last year and last quarter to nearly 3.4 billion. However, major institutions had generally raised their loss expectations to 5 billion, with actual losses slightly less. This mainly reflects investments in Gaode's street view ranking and AI 2C directions like Quark and Qianwen. $Alibaba(BABA.US) $BABA-W(09988.HK) $BABA-WR(89988.HK)

Baidu 3Q25 Quick Interpretation: Third-quarter results basically met guidance and market expectations. This earnings report provides detailed disclosure of AI revenue, aiming to shift market focus from weak advertising to new growth point AI.

In the previous preview, the company mentioned spin-off financing, increasing shareholder returns, and future dual listing and inclusion plans, which were not mentioned in the earnings report. The conference call can be watched for any incremental information.

1. AI revenue contribution accounts for 40%. Baidu's AI revenue is divided into three categories: AI cloud infrastructure, AI applications, and AI native marketing services. Specifically:

(1) AI cloud infrastructure 4.3 billion, year-on-year growth rate of 33%, mainly including API, large models, and GPU leasing, with GPU leasing subscription growth rate of 128%, compared to only 50% last quarter.

On one hand, it reflects the acceleration of AI empowerment in the industry. On the other hand, combined with Tencent's earnings report mentioning that some computing power comes from external leasing, it is not ruled out that the leading giants who previously supplied their own computing power also contributed to the demand this quarter.

The overall smart cloud revenue announced in the conference call, Dolphin Research estimates a growth rate of about 25% (approximately 6.1 billion), which means that the vast majority of revenue is related to AI demand.

(2) AI applications 2.6 billion, year-on-year growth rate of 6%, mainly including Baidu Library, Baidu Netdisk, digital employees, etc. Although it also belongs to AI+, the growth rate is relatively low. Dolphin Research estimates it is mainly due to Baidu Netdisk (promotional discounts this quarter) and other miscellaneous items dragging down. Meanwhile, competition also has an impact, with Quark and WeChat Netdisk recently enhancing functions or services.

(3) AI native marketing services 2.8 billion, year-on-year growth rate of 262%, mainly including Agent and digital humans, with digital humans already reaching 500 million in revenue last quarter. Agent is the intelligent entity for merchants, and this part of the revenue has been positioned by the company as the second growth curve of marketing services business.

2. User loss, advertising pressure remains high. Q3 overall marketing revenue declined by 18%, slightly better than guidance. However, excluding the AI part, the implied traditional advertising part declined by 27% year-on-year. The company mainly attributes it to the impact of AI-generated content, with 70% of mobile search results containing AI-generated content in the third quarter.

But this level of decline, Dolphin Research believes, still cannot exclude the factor of traffic migration to peer ecosystems, including other in-app searches and AI native applications. In the third quarter, Baidu's mobile app MAU decreased by 27 million users quarter-on-quarter, and the product experience improvement effect after AI integration search weakened, reflecting some signs of migration.

3. Other income highlights are mainly Roborun, with order volume accelerating this quarter as internationalization progresses. Overall non-marketing business growth rate of 21% meets market expectations (BBG expectations lagging behind in the chart below).

4. Profit margin significantly declined: Due to multiple factors, Baidu's core operating profit margin fell to 5% in the third quarter.

1) Changes in business structure: With AI revenue recognition, related costs bring significant increments. Currently, the profit margin level of AI business is obviously not comparable to mature advertising business. In the third quarter, Baidu made a one-time impairment of servers and other basic equipment to be eliminated (about 16 billion), and the cost pressure caused by server depreciation in the short term is expected to be partially alleviated in the future.

2) Increase in marketing expenses: The weakening of profit margin in the third quarter is also related to the increase in marketing promotion, which should mainly be related to AI business, including the expansion of cloud service sales teams and the promotion of AI native applications.

5. Capital expenditure slightly expanded: Baidu's capital expenditure in the third quarter was 3.4 billion, year-on-year growth rate of 106%, which can echo the aforementioned action of eliminating traditional servers. With the old ones eliminated, new server-related expenditures also need to increase. Additionally, considering Baidu also has Kunlun chip business, the expansion of capital expenditure may not be external GPU procurement, but possibly related to the procurement of supporting facilities for Kunlun chip. $Baidu(BIDU.US) $BIDU-W(09888.HK)

Hesai 3Q25 Quick Interpretation: Overall, Hesai has once again delivered an impressive report card this quarter. The third-quarter performance exceeded expectations, continuing the high growth trend.

Additionally, Hesai has raised its full-year performance guidance. Specifically:

① The third-quarter performance continued the high growth trend, mainly driven by the accelerated shipment of the low-cost ATX:

Third-quarter revenue reached 800 million yuan, maintaining a high growth trend of 47.5% year-on-year, also exceeding the market expectation of 780 million yuan. The key to the revenue exceeding expectations this quarter was the lidar shipment volume significantly surpassing market expectations, primarily driven by the accelerated shipment of Hesai's low-cost ATX passenger car radar.

This quarter, lidar shipments reached 440,000 units, continuing a high growth trend of 229% year-on-year, also exceeding the market expectation of 400,000 units. The low-cost ATX continues to increase in volume, driving the proportion of passenger car lidar in Hesai's shipment structure to 86.3% (Dolphin Research estimates that ATX accounted for 71% in the third quarter).

From the price perspective, the unit price this quarter remained stable quarter-on-quarter. Although the proportion of low-cost ATX continued to rise quarter-on-quarter (replacing the old AT128), it is expected that due to the higher-priced Robotaxi radar starting to increase in volume this quarter, the final lidar unit price was 1,988 yuan, exceeding the market expectation of 1,900 yuan.

From the net profit perspective, Hesai's net profit this quarter also significantly exceeded expectations. Third-quarter net profit reached 260 million yuan, far exceeding the market expectation of 60 million yuan, with the net profit margin increasing from 6.2% in the previous quarter to 32.2% this quarter.

The significantly exceeded net profit margin was mainly due to a 170 million yuan gain from the sale of equity investments in a startup company recognized in the third quarter. Excluding this one-time impact, the third-quarter net profit margin would be 10.8%, also higher than the market expectation of 7.3%, mainly due to:

1) Third-quarter gross margin was 42.1%. The market originally expected the gross margin to decline from 42.5% in the previous quarter to 40.9% in the third quarter due to the increase in low-cost ATX shipments.

Despite the reduction in high-margin non-recurring engineering service revenue, Hesai maintained a high gross margin level through technological cost reduction and large-scale shipments;

2) Continued strong cost control capability, with the three expenses only increasing by 0.1 billion yuan quarter-on-quarter while revenue increased by 0.9 billion yuan quarter-on-quarter. The three expense ratio also continued to decline by 3.5 percentage points quarter-on-quarter from 43.2% in the second quarter to 39.7%.

② Hesai continues to raise full-year performance guidance:

Due to the dual exceedance of expectations in lidar delivery volume and net profit in the third quarter, Hesai provided fourth-quarter revenue guidance of 1-1.2 billion yuan. If the fourth-quarter shipment unit price is predicted to remain flat quarter-on-quarter, it implies that fourth-quarter lidar shipments will reach 500,000-600,000 units, and the full-year 2025 lidar delivery volume will reach 1.49-1.59 million units, exceeding Hesai's previous guidance of 1.2-1.5 million units.

Additionally, due to the third-quarter net profit performance exceeding expectations, Hesai continues to raise full-year net profit guidance to 350-450 million yuan (originally 200-350 million yuan), implying fourth-quarter net profit of 70-170 million yuan (third-quarter net profit excluding one-time equity gain was 90 million yuan). Based on the midpoint of fourth-quarter revenue and net profit guidance, the fourth-quarter net profit margin will reach 11%, continuing to maintain a very good net profit margin level.$Hesai(HSAI.US) $HESAI-W(02525.HK)

Tesla Quick Interpretation: Overall, regarding Tesla's third-quarter performance, the results are fairly decent. Both total revenue and total gross profit exceeded market expectations. However, net profit slightly fell short of expectations due to increased expenses.

From the perspective of the automotive business, which is the market's primary concern, Tesla's third-quarter vehicle sales revenue surpassed expectations. The core reason is that the market anticipated a quarter-on-quarter decline in Tesla's vehicle sales revenue, but the actual performance showed that the average selling price remained stable compared to the previous quarter.

Dolphin Research believes this is mainly due to Tesla raising the prices of Model S/X in the United States and launching the higher-priced Model L version in China, offsetting the discounts on inventory Model 3/Y vehicles and loan discount offers in various regions.

Regarding the most critical vehicle gross margin (excluding carbon credits), this quarter's vehicle gross margin improved quarter-on-quarter, aligning with market expectations. The quarter-on-quarter improvement in vehicle gross margin (excluding carbon credits) is attributed to the quarter-on-quarter increase in delivery volume, which released scale effects and reduced fixed per-unit amortized costs.

However, Tesla was still affected by over $400 million in tariffs this quarter, increasing the variable cost per vehicle. Ultimately, the automotive business gross margin was generally in line with expectations.

Since the second-quarter report, Tesla's stock price has reached a high of 439, which already reflects relatively full expectations for AI business and the upcoming mass production of Optimus. Therefore, compared to the third-quarter performance, the market is more concerned about the progress of Tesla's anticipated business.

In this earnings call, it was confirmed that the reduced configuration version of Model 3/Y has replaced the plan for the low-cost Model 2.5. Instead, Tesla is more focused on the mass production of the autonomous Cybercab (expected to start mass production in Q2 next year). Due to the U.S. IRA subsidies phasing out in the fourth quarter, U.S. demand will face significant pressure. Without the support of Model 2.5, the fundamentals of vehicle sales in the fourth quarter are expected to continue deteriorating.

Additionally, the release and mass production plan for the Optimus 3.0 prototype has been further delayed (Optimus P3 prototype release in Q1 2026, with mass production planning starting at the end of 2026), undoubtedly pouring cold water on the anticipated business. $Tesla(TSLA.US)