Baidu: Street Boosts Price Targets After Q2 Tops Estimates
By Eric Savitz
The Street is ratcheting up its price targets for Baidu (BIDU) this morning after the China-based Internet search engine late yesterday posted better-than-expected Q2 results.
* Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell repeated his Buy rating on the stock, and raised his target to $90 from $76, “to reflect higher margin estimates and more confidence in the quality of growth given faster customer adds.”
* Brean Murray analyst Andrey Gluknov likewise reiterated his Buy rating, while lifting his target to $90, from $80. “We would remain aggressive buyers of BIDU,” he writes, adding that the company “should continue to benefit from the disruptions in the competitive landscape and the overall acceleration in the search advertising market in China.”
* Citigroup analyst Alicia Yap repeated her Buy rating on the stock, lifting her target to $93, from $87; among other things, she sees the company benefiting from “the distraction of a major competitor,” i.e., Google (GOOG), which continues to grapple with how to operate in China.
* Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster keeps his Neutral rating on the stock, but boosts his target to $81, from $70. “While the company’s trajectory seems unstoppable, we believe that some tailwinds that had driven BIDU’s performance are lessening as we near closer to annualizing the new bidding system and the situation with Google in China appears to have reached a stable point.”
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