Zhongcheng Securities released a research report on the Smart Finance app, stating that it covers Alibaba-SW(09988) for the first time and gives it a buy rating, with estimated revenue of 1.02/1.11/1.19 trillion yuan, and net income attributable to shareholders of 97.3/107.8/113.5 billion yuan from FY2025 to FY2027. The company's domestic e-commerce and cloud business are gradually stabilizing, while its international e-commerce business maintains strong growth. The currency rate improvement brought about by the launch of new advertising products, the optimization of AEChoice's UE model and the liquidity improvement brought by the dual primary listing are expected to become three major catalysts for the improvement of the company's fundamentals/valuation.

The report cited the company's fiscal year 2024 annual report, which achieved operating income of 9411.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.34%; net income attributable to shareholders of 797.41 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.97%; non-GAAP net profit of 157.479 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.39%. Alibaba repurchased $4.8 billion of its own shares in FY24Q4, and the company approved a cash dividend of $4 billion for the fiscal year 2024. The total shareholder return for FY2024 reached as much as $16.5 billion, demonstrating the company's strong willingness to reward its shareholders and its confidence in its operations. In addition, the company's management has stated that it has been preparing for a dual primary listing in Hong Kong and is expected to complete the conversion by the end of August 2024. The bank believes that after the dual primary listing in Hong Kong is launched, the company is expected to be included in the Hong Kong Stock Connect, which will have a certain boosting effect on the company's valuation/stock price in terms of liquidity and investor sentiment.