BABA's earnings come out tonight. Here's what analyst sees happening:

* Earnings might be a little soft. The cost cuts that made the last few quarters' earnings and FCF growth so high are a full year into the rearview mirror now. Also, there was talk of 15,000 or so new hires recently. For these reasons analyst does not expect a massive jump in EPS.

* The Q2 buyback will likely be far larger than the Q1 buyback. On the Q1 earnings call BABA's management revealed that they had already bought back more shares in the first few weeks of Q2, than in all of Q1. Analyst think it's possible that we'll see more than $5B spent buying back shares in Q2.

* Revenue growth at the international commerce business will remain high, but will probably slow down a bit compared to last quarter. That business has way more room to grow than the domestic Chinese business does, but OTOH China's export data has been weak lately. Mixed signals.

* We'll likely get updates about the spinoffs. Alibaba is expected to spin off Alibaba Cloud, Freshippo (the grocery chain) and a few other business units this year and next year. Analyst 'll be keeping a close eye on this one because Alibaba Cloud has been a huge drain on the company's overall performance lately.