In recent months, one of the largest contributor to the positive movement in OpenTable’s (NASDAQ:OPEN) stock price has been the equity ratings and price targets attributed by various analysts. The online restaurant reservation company saw its shares rally from under $40 at the end of last week to almost $46 over the first three days this week. And while the growing optimism among investors about a better-than-expected earnings season is no doubt a factor behind this jump, a bigger push came from the upgrade in OpenTable’s ratings by Barclays (NYSE:BCS). [1] Known to be a popular momentum stock, OpenTable’s value swelled by nearly 15% when Barclays upgraded its shares to “overweight”. Equity analysts also helped OpenTable gain last month, when the company’s shares priced at around $35 then were given price targets of $45 and $49 by Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS) respectively.
We continue to stand by our $65 price estimate for OpenTable, with our reasons for this stance detailed in our article Does OpenTable Really Have to Worry About Google?
We certainly acknowledge the fact that there are some plausible scenarios that present a significant downside to our price estimate, and highlight these scenarios in our article OpenTable Downside Scenarios to Our $65 Estimate.
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Notes:- OpenTable Inc (OPEN) Shares Upgraded to a “Overweight” Rating by Barclays Capital (BCS) Analysts, Localized USA, Jan 9 2012 [↩]
