What happened
There are few events that make an analyst more bullish on a stock than a knockout quarter. This was the case Tuesday with B2B e-commerce specialist GigaCloud Technology (GCT -5.97%). The company saw the first of what's likely to be a number of price-target hikes by prognosticators a day after publishing a very encouraging earnings report. This lifted the share price more than 14% on Wednesday.
So what
The analyst raising his price target for China-based GigaCloud's stock was Matt Koranda. Well before market open, Koranda hiked his fair-value assessment on the shares to $16 apiece, up notably from his previous $13 estimate. He maintained his buy recommendation, too.
The reasoning behind the pundit's latest change on GigaCloud wasn't immediately apparent. It's surely no coincidence that it came less than 24 hours after the specialty-tech company unveiled its second-quarter results.
After all, it managed to boost its revenue by almost 24% year over year to slightly over $153 million. This was on the back of a 32% rise in gross merchandise volume (GMV) to almost $608 million. Even better, the company more than quadrupled its net income across that stretch of time to $18 million, or $0.45 per share.
The average analyst estimate for revenue was less than $136 million. For profitability, it was $0.25 per share.
Now what
GigaCloud quoted its founder and CEO Larry Wu as saying that, "Despite a challenging market environment for large parcel merchandise, our unique business model and technological advances have propelled us to achieve another quarter of exceptional operational and financial results."
Management believes that more growth is on the way. It proffered revenue guidance for its current (third) quarter of $162 million to $167 million. This range well-exceeds the $124 million GigaCloud earned in the same period in 2022.
