Wednesday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades had an unusual upgrade in the consumer electronics segment within technology. GoPro Inc. (NASDAQ: GPRO), which has fallen from its former glory days and been written off by many investors, saw its shares rise after an Oppenheimer upgrade to Outperform from Perform.
What was amazing was that the firm’s new $9 price target implied 36% upside from the prior day’s closing price of $6.62. For what it is worth, analyst upgrades and reiterated ratings in Dow or S&P 500 types of stocks generally are coming with an implied 8% to 10% upside price target at this stage of the bull market. After all, the bull is now nine years old, and the major U.S. indexes are just under all-time highs.
The new lineup of Hero cameras is being viewed as a herald to GoPro’s turnaround plans. The streaming features and the video stabilization efforts are viewed positively. The upgrade cited GoPro’s previously declining share price not being due to competition but largely due to self-inflicted wounds and moonshots that did not pan out.
And the turnaround is considered real in the Oppenheimer call. The firm even threw out the obvious in saying GoPro has been left to the scrap heap but is now finally worth a second look ahead of its new products and the holiday season.
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GoPro shares were originally indicated up 5% on the upgrade, but its stock was last seen up just over 8% at $7.17 on Wednesday shortly before the closing bell. Its stock had actually hit an intraday high of $7.60 earlier in the session.
The 32 million shares traded on Wednesday alone with an hour to go before the closing bell was also a 10-times volume spike for the day. Investors should note that this was the busiest trading day in GoPro shares since the 32 million or so share day on August 3, 2018, when its price jumped up to $7.05 from $5.99. Also worth noting was that the most recent short interest data (September 14 settlement date) showed that 25.3 million GoPro shares were short, with about 12 days to cover.
GoPro had a $6.09 consensus analyst target price from Thomson Reuters ahead of this call, and it has a 52-week trading range of $4.42 to $11.89.
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