BigBear.ai Holdings shares rose 6% on Tuesday, climbing as high as $4.00 before last trading at $3.9550. Volume reached 32,171,648 shares, down 35% from the average session volume of 49,378,023 shares, after the stock closed at $3.73 in the previous session.
The move leaves BigBear.ai with a market capitalization of $1.98 billion and a trading pattern that still reflects a volatile name: a beta of 3.47, a price-to-earnings ratio of -4.14 and a 50-day moving average of $3.75. The company’s 200-day moving average stands at $5.25.
The stock’s latest climb comes after a busy few weeks of reports and disclosures. BigBear.ai posted quarterly earnings on Monday, March 2nd, reporting a loss of 1 cent a share, better than the 5-cent loss analysts had expected, while revenue of $27.30 million fell short of the $33.31 million estimate. Revenue also dropped 37.7% from a year earlier, when the company reported a loss of 43 cents a share.
Since then, brokerage calls have stayed mixed. Cantor Fitzgerald cut its price objective to $5.00 from $6.00 and kept a neutral rating on Tuesday, March 3rd, while HC Wainwright lowered its target to $6.00 from $8.00 and repeated a buy rating the same day. Wall Street Zen downgraded the stock to sell on Saturday, January 10th, and Weiss Ratings reiterated a sell (d-) rating on Monday, April 20th. MarketBeat.com says the consensus rating is Hold, with a consensus target price of $5.50.
There was also insider selling in March. Director Pamela Joyce Braden sold 80,000 shares on Monday, March 16th at an average price of $4.00, a transaction valued at $320,000.00. After the sale, she directly owned 508,687 shares, worth about $2,034,748, and her stake fell 13.59%. Company insiders own 0.54% of BigBear.ai shares.
The tension for investors is that Tuesday’s pop comes against a company still operating with a negative net margin of 230.21% and a negative return on equity of 18.22%, even as its current ratio and quick ratio both sit at 1.78. Analysts expect BigBear.ai to post a loss of 0.3 earnings per share for the current year, leaving the stock’s next move tied to whether revenue growth can catch up with the recent share-price bounce.
