GoPro’s cameras are apparently on many teens’ wish lists, and more families with teens now own the company’s action cameras. As a result, Piper Jaffray analyst Erinn Murphy upgraded GoPro stock from Neutral to Overweight and set a price target of $55 per share.
GoPro shares jumped as much as 3.06% to $45.82 per share during regular trading hours today following that upgrade, which is the second in about two weeks.
Teens like GoPro
Piper Jaffray analysts conducted their Taking Stock with Teens survey covering 6,200 teenagers. Though the percentages relating to GoPro are still small, Murphy thinks they are a good sign for the company’s future. She did not yet make any changes to her estimate in spite of the upgrade. Instead, she thinks her estimates are conservative.
The firm’s survey indicated that almost 18% of families with teens own a GoPro camera. The results also indicated that more teenagers are starting to want one of the company’s cameras, with 1.57% of teens having a GoPro camera on their wish list. That doesn’t seem like much, but last year the percentage was 0.64%, so it is a significant increase.
On a related note, Murphy pointed out that teens are gravitating toward visual social networks, with Instagram being one of the favorites. She sees this as being a positive for GoPro because teens want to spend more of their social media time using platforms that offer more visual content, which means they are more likely to want a device like a GoPro camera that’s able to help them create visual content to post on social media.
Stifel not as much of a GoPro fan
This week GoPro unveiled its HEROCast product, which allows users to broadcast video live from their GoPro camera. The product is an HD micro-transmitter equipped with Vislink so that footage can be captured with a GoPro camera and then transmitted. The device sells for $7,500, so it’s targeted at professional broadcasters. GoPro did not provide a specific release date for it.
Stifel analysts weighed in on the product announcement, maintaining their Hold rating on GoPro. Unlike Piper Jaffray analysts, Stifel’s Jim Duffy and his team don’t think that when balancing the various methods of valuing the company against the risk of execution, there’s not enough upside potential to give the company a Buy rating.
