Data from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s (BABA) shopping website, Taobao, was found to be illegally scraped by a Chinese software developer, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The developer was found to have stolen more than 1.1 billion pieces of user information such as IDs, mobile phone numbers and customer comments, since November 2019. The e-commerce giant assured customers that they were not financially harmed by this leak. However, it failed to disclose the number of people affected.
Alibaba has been under scrutiny by Chinese regulators of late, mainly due to its decision to scrap Ant Group’s IPO, and was also slapped with a penalty of $2.8 billion for taking advantage of its strong position in the market. (See Alibaba’s stock analysis on TipRanks)
In May, Susquehanna analyst Shyam Patil reiterated a Buy rating and a price target of $350 (66.62% upside potential) on the stock. The analyst noted the company has growth opportunities to grab, despite facing certain regulatory headwinds.
Overall, the stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 25 Buys and 1 Hold. The Alibaba average analyst price target of $301.60 implies 43.58% upside potential from current levels. The stock has declined 7.8% over the past year.
Alibaba scores a “Perfect 10” from TipRanks’ Smart Score rating system, indicating the stock has strong potential to outperform market expectations.
