Should Analysts Trust GoPro on Guidance?

[cnxvideo id=”509522″ placement=”ros”]GoPro Inc. (NASDAQ: GPRO) saw its shares hit an all-time low on Wednesday, but now shares have spectacularly bounced 15% after the camera company provided a business update. Essentially, GoPro affirmed guidance for the coming quarter while announcing some restructuring within the company. Considering the announcement, the share movement might be justified, but the question remains whether to trust GoPro going forward, or will it sink back to these lows?

In terms of the guidance for the first quarter, GoPro confirmed that revenues will be in the upper end of its previously announced range of $190 million to $210 million. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for a net loss of $0.53 per share and $200.58 million in revenue for the quarter.

The company also announced a restructuring that reduces its full-year GAAP operating expenses to below $585 million and non-GAAP operating expenses to below $495 million without impacting the GoPro’s road map for new hardware and software products. Effectively, the company will be doing away with 270 positions.

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Investors should know that GoPro’s first quarter is effectively a throwaway compared to the fourth quarter, seasonally speaking. As we said before, first-quarter revenues are expected around $200 million, while fourth-quarter revenues totaled $540.6 million, totally dwarfing this estimate.

Although last quarter GoPro fell short, we can expect this quarter to pick up the company, and analysts seem to be on board.

After the announcement, a few analysts weighed in on GoPro:

• Citigroup upgraded to it Neutral from Sell and raised its price target to $9 from $8.
• Stifel cut its price target to $9 from $10.
• Wedbush maintained a Neutral rating with a $9 price target.
• Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $7.50 from $7.
• Goldman Sachs raised its price target to $6.50 from $6.

Shares of GoPro were last seen up 15% at $8.46 on Thursday, with a consensus analyst price target of $8.63 and a 52-week trading range of $7.91 to $17.68.

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