Rating Quick Look | Apple, Li Auto Target Prices Downgraded! Google, Baidu Receive Positive Outlooks

Citigroup: Maintains "Buy" rating on Apple, lowers target price from $220 to $210

The bank expects Apple's sales revenue and earnings per share for the last quarter to be lower than market expectations, and maintains a conservative outlook on this year's iPhone demand. The bank has reduced its iPhone sales forecasts for March and the next quarter by 2 million and 3 million units, to 50 million and 40 million units respectively, below market expectations of 54 million and 45 million units.

Additionally, due to the stock's underperformance compared to the S&P 500 index since the beginning of the year, the bank believes that profit-taking news is already reflected in the stock price, and investors are focusing on the financial report to be released at the June WWDC24 event. The bank has lowered its earnings forecast for the fiscal year 2025 by 34 cents per share, believing that demand for artificial intelligence smartphones will increase after 2025, with an expansion in gross profit margin.

CMB International: Maintains "Buy" rating on Google, raises target price from $172.2 to $185.5

The bank notes that Alphabet's first-quarter total revenue increased by 15% year-on-year to $80.5 billion, in line with market expectations, while net profit rose by 57% year-on-year to $23.7 billion, exceeding market expectations, mainly due to improved operational efficiency. The company further enhances shareholder returns by declaring a quarterly dividend of $0.2 per share and announcing a new $70 billion share buyback plan.

The bank remains optimistic about profit growth prospects for the fiscal years 2024 to 2026, mainly due to support from core search business, monetization opportunities in artificial intelligence, and the pace of cost control expansion.

TF Securities: Maintains "Buy" rating on Baidu, target price of HK$139

The bank stated that Baidu's 1Q24 AI cloud business revenue reached 4.5 billion yuan, achieving a 9% year-on-year growth. Benefiting from the impact of AI driving cloud and significant cost reduction in the company's Wenxin large model series inference, coupled with the advantages of lightweight models over open source models, the incremental revenue focus of the cloud business has transitioned from model training to model inference. The significant reduction in inference costs will drive the development of the cloud business.

The bank pointed out that Baidu continues to invest in the field of AI, focusing on the "MoE, small model, intelligent body" concept, developing lightweight models, significantly reducing inference costs, and is expected to increase call volume, leading to growth in the medium to long term.

CICC: Lowers target price for Li Auto to $44.2, rates it "Outperform"

Citigroup: Expects BYD's second-quarter net profit to increase by 73%, rates it "Buy"

UBS: Lowers target price for WuXi AppTec to HK$40.1, maintains "Neutral" rating

The bank stated that WuXi AppTec's first-quarter performance was disappointing, with revenue declining by 11% year-on-year to 7.98 billion RMB, below the bank's forecast of 8.83 billion RMB and the market's general expectation of 8.41 billion RMB; net profit fell by 10.4% to 1.94 billion RMB, also below UBS's and market forecasts of 2.13 billion and 2.04 billion RMB.

Based on the first-quarter performance, UBS has lowered its earnings forecasts for 2024 to 2026 by 4%, 5%, and 5%, to 3.47, 3.73, and 3.99 RMB respectively