What happened
After Skillz (SKLZ -0.95%) enjoyed a post-earnings pop at the end of last week, investors cooled on the stock Monday. Its price rose less than 0.6% on the day, trading essentially in line with the forgettable bump of the S&P 500 index. A fresh analyst take on the company helped dampen enthusiasm.
So what
Before market open, Stifel analyst Drew Crum cut his price target on Skillz stock. Crum's new evaluation places the fair value of the shares at $1.25 apiece, down from his previous level of $1.50. This move doesn't make him a Skillz bear, however, as he maintained his buy recommendation on the specialty tech sector stock.
The reasoning behind the prognosticator's move wasn't immediately apparent. He wasn't, however, the only pundit getting less enthusiastic about Skillz in the wake of the company's latest earnings release last Thursday.
Almost immediately following that event, BTIG analyst Clark Lampden also did the price target cut dance with a more drastic reduction. He now feels Skillz is worth only $0.40 per share, well below his preceding target of $0.71. He's more gloomy on the company's prospects than his Stifel peer; he kept his existing sell recommendation intact.
Now what
Investors found enough to like in that results announcement from Skillz to subsequently push its price higher on Friday. While the company's $0.34 per-share loss for its fourth quarter was notably worse than the average analyst estimate and revenue also fell short, several key operational metrics ticked higher. Among these was both the average revenue and average gross marketplace volume (GMV) per monthly active user.
