Alibaba Needs An 'Apple-Esque' Quarter To Ignite The Stock

A partnership between Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE: BABA) could be a match made in Heaven. In the meantime, Alibaba might need to channel its inner Apple if it wants to attract investors.

"Sheer top-line growth is what the market is going to focus on," Cody Willard, chairman of Scutify (a financial social network), told Benzinga. "Whatever the consensus estimates are, it needs to be 10 to 20 percent higher than that. It needs to be Apple-eqsue in its delivery tonight if it's going to pop [Thursday] morning."

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Singles Day = One-Hit Wonder?

Alibaba made billions selling items on Singles Day, an event that was initially started to celebrate those who are single. Alibaba successfully transformed the holiday into a shopping extravaganza that eclipsed Black Friday in 2014.

There has been talk of Singles Day coming to America. Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE: BBY) spokesperson Shane Kitzman indicated that the company would be willing to launch a promotion if and when that happened.

"If it catches on and customers like it, you can probably guess we'll be jumping on board," Kitzman told Benzinga in November 2014.

Willard doesn't think Singles Day will enjoy global success, however.

"The Singles Day thing seems faddish to me," he said. "It might be something that pops for a few years here and at some point peaks. But I don't think that's anything I'd want to bet a $200 billion market cap company's future on."

'Halo Effects'

Lastly, Willard spoke about the potential partnership between Alibaba and Apple.

"Other than headlines and the halo effects from partnering with Apple, I don't see anything huge that the two companies could really do together."

Executives from Apple and Alibaba met last fall to discuss a partnership involving Apple Pay and Alipay. No additional details have been announced since that time.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.