Brean Capital Initiates Autohome With Buy Rating On E-Commerce Expansion, $31 Target

Brean Capital's Fawne Jiang initiated

at Buy with a price target of $31.00. The initiation came after Autohome reported Q1 EPS of $0.39 and revenue of $169.6 million last week. Jiang was optimistic on Autohome's strategic push to expand into ecommerce. "We believe the company is well positioned to capture the expanding [e-commerce] market opportunities given its solid content foundation and user base" and will drive up "top-line growth" said the analyst. The Brean Capital analyst warned, however, investment for new e-commerce initiatives, "particularly the headcount additions and advertising expenses, could weigh on margins in the near term." At the time of writing, Autohome traded at $24.88.