What happened
$44. $40. $35. $33.
For four long days, shares of eponymous artificial intelligence stock C3.ai (AI 1.51%) have gone nowhere but down, falling another 3.3% in morning trading on the NYSE Friday, 11:15 a.m. ET -- and losing nearly 24% from Tuesday's close.
And yet, on Wall Street the news about C3.ai has been generally positive. Or at least it seemed positive, with investment banks Bank of America, Canaccord, JMP Securities, Morgan Stanley, Piper Sandler, and Wedbush all lining up to raise price targets on the company after it beat earnings on Wednesday.
NYSE: AI
Key Data Points
So what
What's ailing this AI stock? Let's start with earnings.
C3.ai reported a $0.13-per-share loss on sales of $72.4 million Wednesday evening. Both numbers exceeded analyst expectations. But even so, a $0.13-per-share loss is pretty big, and most analysts are forecasting C3.ai will keep losing money all through the end of this year -- and next year, too.
Speaking of analysts, six big investment banks raising price targets on AI also sounds pretty bullish for C3.ai. But if you dig a little deeper, it becomes clear that a lot of analysts have significant reservations about this stock, despite raising their price targets.
The Fly, for example, notes that while Piper Sandler raised its price target on C3.ai to $29 per share, it maintained only a neutral rating on the stock, citing worries about the lack of any "underlying growth drivers" to support growing the business. Morgan Stanley, which nearly doubled its price target but maintained an underweight rating on the stock, lamented that there seemed to be no material acceleration in the business -- and indeed, sales growth in the quarter was a mere 0.1%.
Now what
Mind you, not everyone is so pessimistic about C3.ai stock. Investment bank Wedbush, for example, which at $50 a share now assigns the stock the highest price target on Wall Street, thinks C3.ai is a buy based on the "$800B AI transformational opportunity over the next decade," notes The Fly. JMP Securities, which raised its price target to $38, noted that interest in all things AI is "more active than we have ever seen."
That being said, even if JMP (for example) is right about C3 being worth $38 a share, that's only about 13% more than what the stock costs today -- which doesn't seem like much upside for taking the risk of investing in a currently no-growth stock with negative earnings. Unless and until I see some serious revenue growth from C3.ai -- or even better, some profits -- I won't be investing in this AI stock at all.
