GoPro Inc. (NASDAQ: GPRO) has gone from one of the hottest stocks in the market to just another flailing consumer electronics company. At least that is what you would think if you just watched its stock performance in 2015. When you get two new analyst downgrades, while shares are at post-IPO lows, some investors may panic — and others may say this could be marking a bottom.

Monday’s downgrade in GoPro came from Morgan Stanley. The firm lowered its rating to Underweight from Equal Weight, effectively lowering its rating to “Sell from Neutral,” based on equivalent calls at other large firms. What stands out here is that GoPro was just downgraded on Friday by Citigroup. That firm’s downgrade was to Neutral from Buy. Another downgrade was seen by R.W. Baird back on December 4.

What may really stand out here is that the Morgan Stanley price target was slashed to $12 from $23 in Monday’s downgrade. That is the lowest target on Wall Street, with Thomson Reuters having the lowest price target for GoPro shares prior to this at $15. When Citigroup downgraded GoPro on Friday, it was to a price target of $22 per share, down from a prior $75 target in a not-too-timely manner.

Again, some investors and traders must be scratching their heads here. When an analyst slashes its price target by two-thirds and jettisons a Buy rating, that is a call after missing the boat. When Morgan Stanley’s call takes the stock down to the equivalent of “to Sell from Neutral” with the lowest target of them all, maybe that is viewed as just moving from more cautious to quite pessimistic.

Issues facing GoPro were a lack of a product upgrade ahead of the holiday, severely lower prices from similar products from competitors and a changing view of new markets. Morgan Stanley noted competitive pricing and a lack of drone contribution so far.

While the GoPro competition for its HERO action cameras is cheaper, the same is being shown for the coming GoPro drones with a likely $500 to $1000 price tag. The GoPro Drone is set to arrive in 2016.

GoPro’s move to a media company, via the GoPro Channel, also has not yet been seen long enough on the already-saturated Web media market. That leaves another wild card up for interpretation.
One last issue to consider was that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) was seen as a potential acquirer of GoPro. This stemmed from a report from FBR saying that an acquisition by Apple would make sense for Apple’s efforts in Apple’s smartphones, wearables and multimedia offerings. Finding investors who think that is likely is a different matter entirely.

The problem with a company like GoPro is that the core business is still around one real product. New and future revenue streams are effectively tangents off the core Hero action cameras.

Now that you have seen the 360-degree view, it is almost sad when you see the downgrade-brigade come out at the low. In some cases it is just as sad as when you see the upgrade-brigade pumping this one on the way up when valuations were in the stratosphere. GoPro’s market cap is now down to $2.2 billion, versus roughly $10 billion briefly at the peak.

GoPro’s short interest hit a peak of 33.25 million shares at October 30, but it has so far remained above 31 million shares, as of the November 30 settlement date. GoPro shares were right around $20.00 at the end of November.

It may be hard to say that a couple of key downgrades mark the bottom, but it is not too hard to figure out that those downgrades are way-late calls. The $2.2 billion market cap may even prove to be dirt cheap, if GoPro hits its lower revenue and growth targets in 2016 and beyond. Investors may even start saying that paying 12 times next year’s earnings is far short of being expensive now, if they think the company can keep selling devices and expanding its footprint into more tangent lines of business ahead.

Monday’s reaction has been just as harsh as the tone of the latest downgrade — GoPro shares were last seen down over 15% at $16.25, with more than 10 million shares having traded hands after just two hours of trading.

GoPro shares also hit a post-IPO (all-time) low of $15.90 on Monday. Its 52-week high is $69.75, and its all-time high is above $90.00.

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