Analysts at Daiwa Capital Markets have expressed a more optimistic outlook on Alibaba-W (09988) following a pre-results briefing for the company's first fiscal quarter ending in June. The core takeaway is that local e-commerce and cloud computing businesses are performing better than anticipated, while competitive pressures continue to ease, supporting an improvement in profitability.

Beyond near-term earnings, Alibaba is actively expanding its AI ecosystem through investments in data centers, AI-enhanced Alipay services, the Tongyi Qianwen chatbot, and collaborations between its AI model platform Bailian and leading AI research labs.

The brokerage has reaffirmed its "Buy" rating on the stock. The target price for the Hong Kong-listed shares has been slightly increased from HK$188 to HK$190. Concurrently, the target price for Alibaba's US-listed shares (BABA.US) has been raised to $194.