These UBS Comments Sent Baidu (BIDU) Stock Higher Today

UBS analyst Wei Xiong reiterated a Buy rating and raised the price target on Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) to $230.00 per share from the prior $220.00.

The analyst believes Baidu offers “one of the best long-term risk/rewards” in the bank’s research coverage.

Xiong notes that Baidu “is making good progress in its car and cloud initiatives, which are aligned with government policies on technology innovation, yet neither are priced into the stock.”

The analyst has paid special attention to Baidu's autonomous driving platform, Apollo.

“We believe Apollo has established deep moats in technology, with accelerating progress in operations and commercialisation. We expect more catalysts in the next one to two years, such as an increasing number of car models with Apollo intelligent driving solutions (more releases likely in one to two years), scaling robotaxi operation (target 30 cities in 2023) and monetisation (started recently), mass production of self-built EVs (under Jidu in 2023), that should drive investors to assign more value to the business,” the analyst said in a client note.

Xiong values Apollo at $14.9 billion or around 30% of Baidu’s total market cap.

Baidu stock price is up nearly 3% today.

By Senad Karaahmetovic | [email protected]

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