Benchmark analyst Fawne Jiang increased her earnings estimates for Alibaba after the company's Q4 report of earnings upside driven by accelerated core ecommerce retail growth. While she expects continued losses from the company's new strategic initiatives to capture emerging opportunities, Jiang said she also expects improving efficiencies and narrowed loss on some key strategic areas, such as new retail and logistics. The analyst, who views Alibaba as one of the best ways to play China's secular consumption upgrade, keeps a Buy rating on the stock and raised her price target on the shares to $220 from $205.

After attending the virtual launch of Alimama's new site-wide, AI-enabled, and ROI-based ad tool, Morgan Stanley thinks the new tool will improve merchants' marketing efficiency. The analyst, who sees upside risk to Alibaba's take rate and room for top-line estimates to rise, has an Equal Weight rating and $85 price target on Alibaba shares.