Although electric vehicle (EV) company Polestar (PSNY 8.05%) has seen notable improvements in its operations lately, Wednesday saw its stock hit with a big sell-off. On the back of a fresh analyst price target cut, the company's shares took a nearly 12% hit to their price, a more precipitous decline than the 0.2% drop of the benchmark S&P 500 index.
A 25% chop to the price target
The party behind the reduction was Piper Sandler's Alex Potter. Before market open on Wednesday, Potter shaved $0.50 per share from his Polestar price target, leaving it at a new level of $1.50. This didn't affect his recommendation on the EV stock, however, which he maintained as "neutral."
Although Polestar seems to be stabilizing in certain ways -- the company recently regained compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements, and managed to compile and publish its second-quarter earnings -- sales volumes are cause for concern. In light of that, Potter has trimmed his estimates for overall volumes in the first half of this year.
The pundit added that he's also counting on a slower-than-anticipated rollout of the Polestar 3 and 4 models.
NASDAQ: PSNY
Key Data Points
Is the company targeting the right segment?
Polestar is one of the smaller and more struggling EV makers, and it's found the increasingly crowded market to be a challenge. Its business strategy might also be flawed; as Potter pointed out in his new analysis, "While we think Polestar makes beautiful cars, we remain concerned about the vehicles' relatively high price points and potential EU tariffs on Chinese-made EVs."
