Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of February 3, 2015

Article Excerpt

Alibaba Group Holding (ADR), $91.02, symbol BABA on New York (Shares outstanding: 2.5 billion; Market cap: $224.5 billion; www.alibaba.com), the huge Chinese e-commerce company, raised a total of $25 billion last fall, in its IPO or Initial Public Offering. That figure is a world record for a new issue. Alibaba’s new issue price was $68 a share, but it opened for public trading at $92, and moved up to $93.89, 38% above its new issue price. Since then, the company’s sales and earnings growth, although strong, has fallen short of expectations. In the three months ended December 31, 2014, Alibaba’s revenue rose 39.7%, to $4.22 billion from $3.02 billion. However, that was below the consensus estimate of $4.44 billion. It’s also slower than the company’s 54% sales growth in the 2014 third quarter. The company reports that its earnings per share, excluding one-time items, rose 13.5% in the latest quarter, to $0.81. That beat the consensus estimate of $0.74. However, the company’s…