There's another bull in the Twilio (TWLO 0.96%) camp. Baird analyst William Power initiated coverage of the in-app communications specialist after Monday's close. He is starting Twilio stock with an outperform rating and a $35 price target.
Power is the latest Wall Street pro to wax bullish on the stock that seemed to be left for dead after posting disappointing first-quarter results two months ago. The stock took a beating after warning that Uber -- Twilio's largest base customer, accounting for more than 10% of its revenue last year -- would be leaning less on Twilio's platform in some markets.
Image source: Twilio.
There's an app for that
Shares of Twilio have climbed 26% since bottoming out a few days after its problematic quarterly report. Most of the analysts who have chimed in on the stock following its first-quarter debacle have been positive.
Patrick Walravens at JMP Securities put out an encouraging note last month, concluding that Twilio stock could double in the next two years. Uber's a near-term issue, naturally, but his checks show strong gains in its core business.
A month before that, it was Ittai Kidron at Oppenheimer who was bullish. Kidron walked away from Twilio's user conference in late May feeling that it was being conservative in its Uber guidance. He feels that the sell-off earlier that month created a buying opportunity.
Power's $35 price target represents a modest 22% of upside from Monday's close. However, it would move the stock above where it was just before reporting its disappointing financial results. You actually have to go all the way back to near the end of last year to find the last time that Twilio stock was trading at $35.
Twilio is volatile, even if its year-to-date performance doesn't reflect that at first glance. The stock went public at $15 last summer, more than quadrupling at its peak three months later. It would go on to give back a good chunk of those gains by the end of the year. The stock has been tame in 2017, closing on Monday within $0.10 of where it was when the year began. However, it's not fair to say that Twilio's merely marching in place. It took a big hit after its first quarter's earnings release, and it's been clawing its way back ever since.
The next big test will be on Aug. 7 when it offers up its second-quarter financials. It can't afford to scale back its outlook in back-to-back quarters, and thankfully a few analysts don't see that happening.
