News from the Financial Associated Press, February 2 (edited by Zhou Xinyang)Hong Kong stocks Baidu Group-SW (09888.HK) rose again on Thursday (February 2). As of press time, its shares are up nearly 8%, and have risen more than 38% since early January.
The reason why Baidu Group continues to rise is that the market reports that the company intends to launch the Chinese version of ChatGPT, Baidu’s artificial intelligence chat robot, in March.
In this regard, some investment bank analysts believe that it is still too early to judge the liquidity of Baidu’s artificial intelligence chatbot. However, some big banks believe that this news is good for stock prices and will help boost earnings.
Morgan Stanley believes that Baidu’s launch of the Chinese version of ChatGPT will demonstrate the company’s artificial intelligence research and development capabilities and reduce the risk of potential research and development interruptions. At the same time, this is at the same pace as the company’s cloud business strategic policy, which can achieve medium and long-term growth of the cloud business and lead the industry.
The bank pointed out that the only concern is that ChatGPT may break user habits. Baidu had 630 million monthly active users (MAU) in the third quarter of last year, an increase of 5% year-on-year, so it is believed that the users among them have a certain degree of search habits and stickiness.
Morgan Stanley believes that it is still too early to consider how to combine user search activities with artificial intelligence chatbots, how the company monetizes, related advertising revenue, and market share. Therefore, it is necessary to wait for the management to make more presentations in the upcoming fourth quarter results meeting of last year, so Baidu is rated as “in line with the market” and the target price for US stocks is maintained at US$150.
Macquarie raises Baidu profit forecast
However, Macquarie is relatively optimistic about Baidu’s opportunity to launch an artificial intelligence chat robot similar to ChatGPT in China, and sees it as a driving force for its stock price to rise.
The bank raised Baidu’s adjusted profit per share by 13% and 4% this year and next, and predicted that the adjusted operating profit margin will increase by 2.4 percentage points to 18.3% this year. At the same time, it raised its target price from HK$166 to HK$169, maintaining “Outperform” rating.
Chatbot technology such as ChatGPT has now become a must for AI technology companies. Microsoft has announced that it will invest billions of dollars in OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, and strengthen cooperation in the next few years; Google (Google) is also actively fighting. It is reported that it will Demonstrate at least 20 new AI products and a chat robot within the year.
OpenAI launched two popular software last year, Dall-E 2 for AI drawing, and ChatGPT, a chat robot. When using Dall-E, after entering a theme, an image will be synthesized, and the image can be edited by the user.
As for the chat robot ChatGPT, it is considered to be able to change the world as soon as it comes out, challenging industry giants Google and Apple’s Siri.