Nine analysts cut their price targets on HPE stock after earnings
Analysts are weighing in on dining stock Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLAY), airline issue Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL), and tech stock Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE:HPE). Here's a quick roundup of today's bearish brokerage notes on shares of PLAY, DAL, and HPE.
Ugly Sales Sink PLAY Stock
Dave & Buster's Entertainment stock is down 6.4% to trade at $54.45, after the company reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue and cut its comparable-store sales guidance for 2017. As a result, PLAY received no fewer than four price-target cuts, including to $68 from $70 from Raymond James. This is the second time Raymond James has lowered its price target for PLAY in as many weeks. The shares have lost about 26% since touching a record high of $73.48 on June 8, and are now in the red on a year-to-date basis, trading at their lowest level since February.
Quite a few short sellers are likely cheering Dave & Buster's stock decline. While short interest decreased by 9.2% during the last reporting period, the 4.47 million shares sold short represent a healthy 10% of the stock's total available float. It would take more than eight days for the shorts to fully cover their positions, at PLAY's average daily trading volume.
Delta Stock Stalls Ahead of Hurricane Irma
A day after Delta cut its expectations for current-quarter passenger unit revenue, the stock is down another 2% to trade at $44.94 today. Weighing on DAL is a broader airline sector swoon, with travel stocks sinking ahead of Hurricane Irma's expected U.S. landfall, not long after Hurricane Harvey wreaked its havoc along the Gulf. In addition, Imperial Capital cut its price target on Delta stock to $50 from $54.
DAL shares have dropped 19% since touching a record high of $55.75 on July 10, and are now set to close beneath their 320-day moving average, which contained DAL's pullback earlier this year. Despite the airline stock's recent struggles, analyst sentiment remains fairly optimistic. Of the 14 brokerages covering DAL stock, 13 rate it a "buy" or better.
HPE Stock Hit With Price-Target Cuts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise stock is down 0.4% to trade at $13.98, after the company lowered its full-year profit forecast. BofA-Merrill Lynch downgraded HPE stock to "underperform" from "neutral," and cut its price target by $2 to $13. In addition, the tech stock received at least eight other price-target cuts, including to $14 from $18 at Barclays.
Ahead of earnings, options traders preferred calls to puts by a bigger-than-usual margin. HPE stock has a 10-day call/put volume ratio of 4.29 at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), which ranks in the 80th percentile of its annual range.