Spotify Technology’s spot stock got another lift on Sunday after Wall Street Zen upgraded the music streaming company from hold to buy. The call added to a string of recent analyst moves that have kept the stock in focus even after a sharp run over the past year.
SPOT opened at $516.85 on Friday, still well above its $405 one-year low but below the $785 high. MarketBeat data showed a consensus Moderate Buy rating and a $692.14 target price, with two analysts at Strong Buy, 22 at Buy and seven at Hold.
The latest upgrade follows several other shifts in sentiment. Moffett Nathanson started coverage on Jan. 27 with a neutral rating and a $487 target. Goldman Sachs upgraded Spotify on Jan. 23 to buy from neutral, but cut its target to $700 from $735. Sanford C. Bernstein trimmed its target to $650 from $830 on Jan. 14 while keeping an outperform rating. Arete Research raised its view to buy on Feb. 26 and set a $586 target, and Daiwa Securities Group began coverage on March 26 with an outperform rating and a $535 target.
Spotify’s last earnings report, on Feb. 11, gave bulls fresh numbers to point to. The company said quarterly earnings were $5.16 per share, beating the $3.16 consensus estimate by $2.00, while revenue reached $5.32 billion, topping the $5.14 billion estimate and rising 6.8% from a year earlier.
The tension for investors is that the analyst optimism has arrived alongside insider selling. CEO Gustav Soderstrom sold 20,833 shares on April 1 at an average price of $473.52, for total proceeds of $9,864,842.16. CEO Alex Norstrom sold 5,436 shares the same day at an average price of $479.51, for $2,606,616.36. Those sales came after a quarter in which Spotify beat expectations and after a series of upgrades that have left the stock with more support from Wall Street than caution, but not without a reminder that management itself has recently been cashing out.
For now, the stock sits between strong earnings momentum and a mixed but improving analyst backdrop, with the next move likely to hinge on whether that support can outweigh the pressure from insider sales and a share price that has already climbed hard off its lows.
