What happened
Shares of Plug Power (PLUG 1.37%) dropped nearly 3% in morning trading Tuesday, before stopping and reversing course, following the market higher.
Shares of the fuel cell pioneer regained their Monday closing price a little after 11 a.m. EDT, and as of 1:10 p.m. today, the stock was up a solid 1%.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
This morning, analysts at Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on Plug stock to $35 a share. This wasn't a huge reduction -- Morgan Stanley had previously valued the stock at $36. But it wasn't great news, and combined with its lukewarm equal-weight rating, it was enough to depress Plug Power early on.
Now what
But now the stock is moving higher again, and I think you can attribute that to a rising stock market that's decidedly in the green today after yesterday's sell-off, helping to carry Plug Power higher despite the morning's bad news.
Can it maintain today's momentum? The answer probably depends on the market -- and on how investors decide that earnings season is shaping up. In Plug Power's case, first-quarter 2021 earnings are already in the record books, and were generally unsurprising last month. Peer fuel cell companies Bloom Energy (BE 10.04%) and Ballard Power (BLDP 2.94%), on the other hand, have not yet reported their quarterly earnings news.
As those numbers come out over the next two weeks, Plug Power shareholders can anticipate that their stock will largely trade on sentiment about how the rest of the fuel cell industry is doing.
