Electric-vehicle-charging stocks have far outpaced Wall Street’s raised target prices. Blink Charging stock, however, is tumbling on a downgrade.
Courtesy Blink
Stock of electric-vehicle-charging equipment and service suppliers have been on fire, boosted by strong EV sales, new industry partnerships that will speed EV adoption, and by President Biden’s infrastructure bill.
But after a big month, Wall Street is re-jiggering ratings.
Blink Charging Blink Charging (ticker: BLNK
) stock isn’t benefitting from the ratings changes. Shares are down 11% in late Monday trading after a downgrade. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial are up 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.
Cowen analyst Gabe Daoud downgraded Blink stock to Hold from Buy. His target price went to $40 from $41. It’s a small change, but the stock was at about $43 coming into Monday trading, up 47% over the past month. Valuation was the reason cited for the downgrade. The EV-charging industry has a lot going for it with sales of EVs growing around the globe. But a lot of the good news is priced into the stocks, according to Daoud.
With the downgrade, 57% of analysts covering Blink stock rate it at Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for small-capitalization stocks is about 65%. The average analyst price target for Blink stock is about $41, roughly 9% higher than where shares are trading at Monday.
Other EV-charging stocks look similar to Blink–with Wall Street getting a little more cautious and investors taking some profits after big gains.
Stock in EVgo (EVGO), Wallbox (WBX), Volta (VLTA), ChargePoint (CHPT) and Beam Global (BEEM), as well as Blink, are down 9.3% over the past week, on average. That quintet is still up about 37% over the past month.
Only ChargePoint stock has eked out a 1% gain over the past week. It’s up about 24% over the past month.
ChargePoint is the most valuable of the pure-play, publicly traded EV-charging stocks with a market capitalization of about $9 billion. About 63% of analysts covering the stock rate shares at Buy. A month ago, its Buy-rating ratio was about 69%. The stock has actually picked up one new Buy rating over the past month, but also two new Hold ratings over the same span. The average analyst price target is about $33, up about 20% from recent levels.
Investors are fine with ChargePoint. Volta and Wallbox are the most popular EV-charging stocks—even though coverage is limited. All four analysts covering Volta stock rate it at Buy. The average price target for Volta is about $14, up 32% from recent levels. Both analysts who cover Wallbox stock rate it at Buy. The average target price between the two is $25.50 for Wallbox, up about 67% from recent levels.
As for Beam and EVgo, 50% and 43% of analysts covering those two rate shares at Buy, respectively. A month ago the Buy-rating ratios were 50% and 57%, respectively. The Beam Buy-rating ratio is unchanged, but EVgo has lost one Buy rating.
The average analyst price target for EVgo shares is about $17.40, up 25% from recent levels. The average analyst price target for Beam stock is $44.50, up about 50% from recent levels.
Over the past month, most of the average target prices are up, but EV-charging stocks have risen faster. It’s that dynamic has led to increased caution.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
