Sometimes it seems as if shares of GoPro (GPRO 3.65%) are falling in slow motion. The leading maker of wearable cameras saw its stock tumble 9.84% last week, buckling under after a Goldman Sachs analyst downgrade.
Simona Jankowski is lowering her rating from neutral to sell. She feels that the camera market's saturation, GoPro's ill-fated entry into the drone market, and other recent product rollout miscues pose significant challenges for the leading maker of wearable cameras. She feels that stock is overvalued, despite trading 92% off its all-time highs set a few months after its 2014 IPO. Jankowski is slashing her price target on the shares from $9.50 to $6.
Image source: GoPro.
From bad to worse
Things seemed pretty bad for GoPro a week earlier when Citi analyst Stanley Kovler initiated coverage of GoPro with a sell rating and an $8 price target. Kovler feels that GoPro may be the top dog in its niche, but it's hard to overcome the overall decline in the wearable camera market. What good is having the thickest slice of a thinning pie? Kovler also feels that GoPro isn't likely to make enough noise in the drone market later this year to move the needle of its profitability, a fair assumption given the embarrassing recall of the Karma drone before it had a chance to take off.
Investors may not have been happy with Kovler's bearish market call, but his $8 price target now seems kind given Jankowski's goal of $6.50. We're a far cry from when the stock nearly hit triple digits during the summer of 2014.
GoPro seemed to be turning the corner when it posted a 24% year-over-year increase in sales during the holiday quarter. However, that came off four straight periods of declines of at least 30%. Wall Street pros were also holding out for 32% top-line growth.
It's hard to get bullish about GoPro. The stock plummeted 72% in 2015, only to see the shares cut in half last year. The stock was actually trading marginally higher for 2017 when the week began, but now it's trading 8% lower year to date.
The only reason that sales moved higher during last year's fourth quarter is that it introduced the Hero5, more than two years after the niche-defining Hero4. Sales grew over the 2015 holiday quarter, but it was still 15% less than the holiday quarter of 2014. In short, GoPro's going to have to string together several quarters of growth before it can prove that wearable cameras aren't a trend that peaked two years ago. The stock price keeps getting cheaper, but as long as analysts keep slashing their price targets, this cruel game of limbo will continue.
