Citi opened a 30-day short-term positive view on Alibaba Group Holding (阿里巴巴, 9988.HK), keeping a Buy rating and an HKD189 target price, and told clients the company's Apsara Conference in Hangzhou from Sep 22 to 24 could produce announcements that lift the shares.
The broker expects the three-day event, held under the theme "Intelligence Goes Beyond," to deliver a Qwen model v3.8 series upgrade alongside new v3.9 or v4.0 versions, infrastructure and network enhancements to the Model-as-a-Service platform, upgrades to T-Head AI and CPU chips, and new or improved enterprise intelligent agent applications. Citi also flagged likely partnership disclosures covering embodied AI, wearable devices, robotics and smart devices.
Alibaba is expected to restate its full-stack position at the conference, including a RMB380 billion capital expenditure plan spread over three years and a target of USD100 billion in external cloud revenue by fiscal 2031. Management may also disclose MaaS annual recurring revenue as of end-September while holding its year-end ARR target at RMB30 billion, according to the Citi note.
The call lands on a stock that has drawn heavy bearish positioning. Short selling in BABA-W stood at US$1.27 billion, or 12.885% of turnover, as of Sep 18 at 16:25, according to AASTOCKS data. The shares last traded up 1.900 points, or 1.738%, on the day the note circulated.
Citi's view is a bet on event risk rather than a change in estimates. The broker said any positive surprise announcements at Apsara could trigger a positive share price reaction, framing the conference as the near-term trigger after recent weakness across China internet share prices. The HKD189 target implies meaningful upside from current levels, though the note did not restate the percentage.
The bullish call runs against a more cautious read from another bulge-bracket desk. Goldman Sachs cut its target prices on both Alibaba and Tencent Holdings (騰訊控股, 0700.HK) and said it prefers China internet gaming and entertainment names through year-end, a positioning that implies less conviction on the e-commerce and cloud complex that carries Alibaba's AI spending.
For holders, the setup is binary and dated. A concrete Qwen v4.0 release, T-Head chip specifications or MaaS ARR progress toward the RMB30 billion target would give the AI cloud narrative fresh numbers to trade against; a conference that recycles prior guidance leaves the stock exposed to the 12.885% short base and to Goldman's sector rotation call. Alibaba's next scheduled earnings report is the following major checkpoint on the calendar.
