GNRC also earned an upgrade to "buy" from "neutral"
Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GNRC) is up 3.6% to trade at $326.48 this morning, after Goldman Sachs added the security to its "Americas Buy List." The brokerage firm also upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral" while setting a $410 price target, noting the company's broad product portfolio across the clean energy and stand-by generators sectors, as well as its store count footprint.
Goldman Sachs is joining an overwhelmingly bullish brokerage bunch, with 15 of the 16 analysts in question already sporting a "buy" or better rating coming into today. Plus, the 12-month consensus target price of $459.78 is a 41.3% premium to the equity's current perch.
Options traders are eyeing the security in response to today's bull note. So far, 1,299 calls and 453 puts have exchanged hands, volume that's eight times the average intraday amount. Most popular is the May 280 call, followed by the 320 call in the same series, with new positions being opened at both.
This penchant for calls has been the norm. Over at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), GNRC's 50-day call/put volume ratio of 2.67 ranks higher than 98% of annual readings. This means long calls have been getting picked up at a much quicker-than-usual pace in the last two months.
These options traders are in luck, as Generac stock sports attractively priced premiums at the moment. This is per GNRC's Schaeffer's Volatility Index (SVI) of 42%, which sits in the relatively low 24th percentile of its 12-month range, meaning options players are pricing in low volatility expectations.
What's more, its Schaeffer's Volatility Scorecard (SVS) stands at a high 93 out of 100. This indicates GNRC has exceeded options traders' volatility expectations over the past year.
Generac stock has been struggling to topple the $330 mark -- an area that also happens to coincide with its 80-day moving average. If today's gains hold, the shares will have logged their highest close since Jan 4. In the last nine months, however, GNRC has shed 24.3%.