Baidu price target raised to $168 from $160 at Bernstein

Bernstein raised the firm’s price target on Baidu to $168 from $160 and keeps an Outperform rating on the shares. The company has rolled out a new marketing platform QingGe that promises superior advertising targeting and merchant ad creation services leveraging generative artificial intelligence improvements, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm says that while early days, it is seeing “some signs of what it can do” with 20% increase in conversion rates. It believes the opening earlier than expected should be a positive to the stock, with more immediate monetization from AI.