UPDATE: Barclays Maintains Youku Tudou at Overweight Ahead of Q3 Results

Barclays reiterated its Overweight rating and $27 price target on Youku Tudou

as it previewed the company's Q3 earnings. Barclays said, "In light of the challenging advertising demand and lack of visibility on advertiser commitments, we believe online video advertising, while continuing to benefit from budgets shifting from offline TV to online, will not be completely immune from the slowdown. In addition, with the first full quarter of consolidating Tudou financials, we believe disruption from sales team integration and operation integration risks remain. Hence we expect Youku may provide a cautious outlook for 4Q12. Nevertheless, we remain positive on overall online video industry growth prospects over the longer term as we believe the online video advertising business model will be less disruptive in the transition from PC to mobile." Youku Tudou closed at $17.69 on Wednesday.