Mark Mahaney's Take On Alibaba And Facebook Ahead Of Their Earnings

One of the most well respected tech analyst on the Street RBC's Mark Mahaney was recently on CNBC to share his take on Facebook Inc FB and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA ahead of their earnings.

Facebook

“This is a high borrowed stock for the quarter. Very different set up than we had with Netflix or Amazon or Google. They probably need to do $0.50, the Street is in there at $0.48. They’ll probably repeat the guidance they gave last quarter, about 40 to 50 p OPEX growth for the full year. People are going to wonder where they are spending that on and finally those metrics needs to keep improving, we need to see decent teens, double-digit growth in users and engagement levels keep growing and have to be there."

When asked if Facebook’s stock is ripe for a pullback, Mahaney replied, “No, I don’t think so, I just think there’s not a lot of upside on this particular print, but we like the stock here. It’s not one of our top 2 picks. I prefer those Amazon and Google,[I] like the set-up somewhere interesting there, but nonetheless we like the stock.”

Alibaba

“BABA, [I] don’t think the bar is as high here,” Mahaney said. “They need to do something close to 50p year-over-year GMV growth. The numbers that we all got from the singles day back in November 11th looked very positive. They should be able to print that kind of number. The overhang here….is the lock-up expiration that comes at the end of March. So, it’s hard to see a big gap-up in this stock until you get some more of that supply out in the market.”