At Holdings Channel, we have reviewed the latest batch of the 30 most recent 13F filings for the 03/31/2024 reporting period, and noticed that Alphabet Inc (Symbol: GOOG) was held by 20 of these funds. When hedge fund managers appear to be thinking alike, we find it is a good id
Legendary investor Warren Buffett advises to be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. One way we can try to measure the level of fear in a given stock is through a technical analysis indicator called the Relative Strength Index, or RSI, which me
Legendary investor Warren Buffett advises to be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. One way we can try to measure the level of fear in a given stock is through a technical analysis indicator called the Relative Strength Index, or RSI, which me
Legendary investor Warren Buffett advises to be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. One way we can try to measure the level of fear in a given stock is through a technical analysis indicator called the Relative Strength Index, or RSI, which me
The cotton market shot higher on Wednesday, with futures closing 106 to 256 points higher as May rolled off the board. Cotton limits are reverting to 4 cents due to July creeping back in that 80 cent level. The US dollar index was up 105 points, a negative input, while...
The cotton market is shooting higher on Wednesday, as contracts are up 170 to 245 points with May expiring today. The US dollar index is up 105 points, a negative input, while crude oil is 52 cents higher. Precip is expected for a wide swath of the Southeast US over...
After Mediterranean-themed restaurant CAVA Group, Inc. (
NYSE:CAVA
) served up strong growth last year, investors are hoping for a second course in 2024. Shares of the fast-casual chain hit a fresh record high of $77.14 on Monday, less than a year after opening at an IPO price of $42.00. The mid-cap high-flier is
up more than 70% year-to-date and is showing no sign of slowing down.
CAVA Group is an up-and-coming restaurant operator that is based in Washington, D.C. Boldly going head-to-head with Chipotle (
NYSE:CMG
), it offers a variety of heart-healthy Mediterranean bowls and pitas at locations across the United States.
CAVA Group stock is currently on an impressive seven-month win streak on the backs of some strong 2023 financials. In a tough discretionary spending environment, the company grew revenue and same-restaurant sales by 60% and 18%, respectively, last year. It is not only growing by expanding its footprint but also by generating higher sales at existing locations.
In addition to producing strong top-line growth, CAVA Group is already profitable. The company has recorded profits in each of the first three quarters since going public in June 2023. It is also three-for-three in surpassing
Wall Street’s earnings estimates.
I am optimistic about CAVA Group’s potential to replicate its above-industry growth, going forward. The restaurant chain has created a niche category within the fast-growing limited-service restaurant space. Its food matches consumers’ increasing demand for healthy protein, vegetables, and fruits as part of broader U.S. health and wellness trends. By the second half of this year, CAVA Group plans to have steak on the menu at all locations.
CAVA Group is poised to build off its recent success by staying in tune with customer preferences and opening many new stores.
Aggressive Store Expansion
In 2023, CAVA Group opened 72 new restaurants, a 30% increase from 2022. This was a gutsy move, considering inflation and elevated credit card rates had big impacts on American discretionary budgets. The company is doubling down on its aggressive expansion strategy. It expects to build 48 to 52 more restaurants this year to bring its total unit count to at least 357. This may only be the beginning.
CAVA Group ended 2023 with 309 restaurants across 24 U.S. states. Management believes the company is in the early stages of expansion and has the potential to top 1,000 locations by 2032. The company generally targets upper-middle-income households in highly populated urban and suburban settings. Catering to higher-earning consumers definitely played a role in last year’s outperformance, and this makes CAVA Group a relatively economy-proof restaurant stock.
The Midwest U.S. is expected to be a focus area for 2024 expansion. This plan was confirmed on April 26 when CAVA Group opened its first Chicago-area location. It marked the chain’s first step into the upper Midwest market. The Southeastern and Southwestern U.S. is where CAVA Group has its largest presence, with more than 130 locations.
Later this month, we’ll learn if the company’s growth strategy is off to a good start this year. CAVA Group is scheduled to announce 2024 first-quarter financial results after the market closes on May 28. In the fourth quarter of 2023, higher premium item orders and moderating input costs led to a surprise profit. The current consensus estimate for 2024 first-quarter EPS is $0.03.
Is CAVA Stock a Buy, According to Analysts?
Despite the stock’s strong year-to-date performance, Wall Street research firms remain mostly bullish on CAVA Group. In the past three months, the stock has received eight Buy ratings and three Hold ratings.
Last month,
Argus Research analyst Christine Dooley upgraded CAVA Group from Hold to Buy. Dooley pounced on the sell-off from a 52-week high to raise her rating, saying the restaurant “has a long runway to growth.”
Also last month, Wedbush analyst Nick Setyan kept a Buy rating on CAVA Group. Setyan similarly thinks the company is well-positioned for long-term growth driven by store expansion, menu innovation, digital initiatives, and a revamped loyalty program.
The analyst set a Street-high $74.00 price target on CAVA.
What Is the Consensus Price Target for CAVA Stock?
CAVA Group shares have already exceeded Wall Street’s highest price target of $74.00. Meanwhile, the latest
CAVA stock consensus price target is $63.82, which implies 13.9% downside from current levels. This could mean CAVA is due for a pullback. On the other hand, another strong earnings report could cause analysts to boost their price targets.
The Bottom Line on CAVA Stock
CAVA Group shares have more than doubled from their October 2023 low due to better-than-expected earnings releases and a bright long-term growth outlook. As the company’s aggressive expansion story plays out, growth metrics could continue to impress. The stock appears overheated in the near term, though, so waiting for a dip may suit bullish investors.
Disclosure
This year started with a bang, saw a fizzle in April – but now appears to be regaining its stride. As we saw last year, the gains continue to be dominated by the ‘Magnificent 7’ tech stocks. This group of mega-cap companies collectively experienced a 48% year-over-year earnings increase in the recent first-quarter 2024 releases, in contrast to a 2% collective decline across the other S&P companies.
Going forward, however, expectations are that the remaining 493 companies on the S&P will close that gap, and Bank of America strategist Ritesh Samadhiya sets out a case for the Mag 7 stocks to realize a 15% earnings share gain in Q4 while the rest of the index increases its share to 14%.
That forecast implies a hefty broadening of the base, opening more opportunities for investors. The combination of a broader base and the current improved investor sentiment has Samadhiya’s team feeling bullish – and their colleagues among the Bank of America stock analysts are running with it, telling investors that it’s time to take advantage of the potential for wider gains and to jump on the bandwagon for two stocks in particular.
A look into the
TipRanks data shows that these 2 stock picks from BofA offer widely divergent potentialities – but Bank of America’s analysts are predicting solid upsides for both. Here are the details.
Cisco Systems
(
CSCO)
Cisco Systems is a well-known name in the world of networking technology, with a wide and varied set of product lines on the market. The company’s product offerings include switches, routers, cloud and network management, interfaces and modules, outdoor and industrial wireless access points, wireless controllers, firewalls, and secure endpoints. The list is long and includes product lines for data centers, data analytics, video, IoT, and software. There are few areas involved in online networking and security that Cisco isn’t involved in.
In a move designed to bolster its strong position in software and data analytics, Cisco acquired the analytic software company Splunk in a transaction worth approximately $28 billion. The deal brings Splunk’s capabilities in data searching, monitoring, and analysis into Cisco’s stable of product offerings, making Cisco one of the world’s largest software companies. New features for Cisco, derived from the acquisition, include security and observability solutions. The transaction was completed on March 18.
Cisco has multiple opportunities on tap for the near future, including the movement of AI systems to Ethernet networks. This will bring the ‘shiny new thing,’ gen AI, directly into one of Cisco’s core competencies. In addition, Cisco’s strength in optical networks will open up opportunities for the company to move into the hyperscaler ecosystem.
Despite Cisco’s solid reputation and strong market position, the company’s stock has underperformed in recent months. The company reported its fiscal 2Q24 results in February, and while the financial results surpassed the forecasts, the company’s guidance failed to impress.
But the Q2 results do bear a closer look. The company brought in $12.8 billion in revenue, down 6% year-over-year but $100 million better than had been expected. At the bottom line, Cisco’s non-GAAP EPS of 87 cents was 3 cents per share over the estimates. Looking forward, management gave fiscal Q324 revenue guidance in the range between $12.1 billion and $12.3 billion – but the consensus had looked for $13.1 billion. The EPS forecast of 84 of 86 cents per share was also lower than the 92 cents analysts had hoped to see.
At least one analyst, however, is not fazed by Cisco’s guidance. Tal Liani, 5-star analyst from Bank of America, believes that the upside potential here – coming from Cisco’s strengths in the AI and Security segments, as well as the Splunk acquisition – simply outweigh the weaknesses.
“We expect Networking to start normalizing and see renewed growth driven by Cisco’s share gains in Ethernet-based AI buildouts of hyperscalers. We expect Security growth to accelerate with the help of firewall stabilization and recent new product launches. Lastly, we see great growth synergies from Splunk’s acquisition. While the next two quarters may remain pressured, we believe this weakness is fully reflected in Street expectations and management guidance is adequately conservative,” Liani opined.
Liani complements his positive stance with a Buy rating on CSCO, and a $60 price target that points toward a 25% upside on the one-year time horizon. (To watch Liani’s track record,
click here)
The bullish Bank of America viewpoint here is something of an outlier; this stock has a Hold rating from the analyst consensus, based on 17 recent recommendations that include 4 Buys and 13 Holds. The shares have a $53.67 average price target, suggesting a ~12% one-year gain from the current share price of $48. (See
CSCO stock forecast
)
89bio, Inc. (
ETNB)
The second Bank of America pick we’ll look at is 89bio, a research-oriented biopharmaceutical company with a focus on finding, developing, and commercializing new therapeutic agents for the treatment of liver and cardio-metabolic diseases. The company’s research pipeline is organized around its advanced drug candidate BIO89-100, and includes clinical studies in the treatment of NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, sometimes now referred to as MASH, or metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis) and SHTG (severe hypertriglyceridemia).
The drug candidate BIO89-100, also known as pegozafermin, was engineered specifically to target the underlying metabolic issues that cause NASH and SHTG. The drug is a glycoPEGylated analog of FGF21, or fibroblast growth factor 21. FGF21 is a liver hormone known to act as a master metabolic regulator with broad effects, particularly on the glucose and lipid metabolism. Pegozafermin was developed to increase the half-life of the FGF21 hormone.
89bio has recently posted updates from three trials, all targeting the NASH indication. In March, the company initiated a Phase 3 trial, dubbed ENLIGHTEN, for non-cirrhotic (F2-F3) and cirrhotic (F4) patients. In addition, the company has also released two data sets from the Phase 2b ENLIVEN trial, in patients with advanced NASH and with cirrhotic NASH. The data sets demonstrated statistically significant improvements in key markers of liver health. On the SHTG side, the company is continuing to enroll patients in the Phase 3 ENTRUST trial, to evaluate the efficacy, safety and tolerability of pegozafermin in the treatment of SHTG. Data from this trial is expected for release in 2025.
The solid research program on pegozafermin and its long-term commercial potential caught the attention of analyst Alexandria Hammond, who writes in her coverage for Bank of America.
“Beyond macro uncertainties, we suspect concerns over competition in the fatty liver disease space (aka MASH) and commercial unknowns ahead of the first-to-market MASH launch have weighed sentiment. We acknowledge the uncertainties of the MASH commercial landscape, but, in our view, 89Bio’s FGF21 analogue pegozafermin offers intriguing upside as a next—and possibly best-in-class— MASH agent given a more favorable safety/tolerability profile (projected launch 2027) in a particularly attractive and less crowded market sub-segment,” Hammond opined.
Hammond adds, laying out a clear case for investors to buy in now, “With pegozafermin well-positioned to compete for the space’s meaningful—and addressable potential—along with the limited downside, we think the current risk/reward is particularly attractive.”
These comments support the analyst’s Buy rating on ETNB, while her $30 price target implies a robust 232% one-year upside potential. (To watch Hammond’s track record,
click here)
Overall, this stock is clear winner in Wall Street’s eyes, boasting a Strong Buy consensus rating from the analysts based on 5 recent ‘Buy’ calls against a single ‘Hold.’ The stock is selling for $9.03 and its $29.80 average price target suggests that it will gain 230% over the course of the next 12 months. (See
ETNB stock forecast
)
To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’
Best Stocks to Buy, a tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.
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