Upstart Plunges After Wedbush Cuts Price Target
2022.05.20 21:56
By Sam Boughedda
Investing.com — Shares of Upstart Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UPST) have fallen more than 17% after Wedbush analyst David Chiaverini cut the firm’s price target on the stock to $15 from $20 before the open on Friday.
The analyst kept an Underperform rating on the shares and noted a new $649 million pending securitization of Upstart loans.
Chiaverini also said that Kroll Bond Rating Agency issued a presale report on Thursday for the loans and stated that “most deal metrics indicate the ABS [asset-backed securities] market is getting more difficult.”
In addition, he added that Kroll did not provide issuer ratings on class B and class C notes for the deal, which is a departure from its regular practice. “We could infer that there may not have been enough credit enhancement to support an investment grade rating on the class B notes,” wrote the analyst.
Chiaverini’s Underperform rating on Upstart “is based on weakening delinquency/loss trends on recent 2021 vintage securitizations that appear to be deteriorating worse than Kroll’s base case scenarios and at a faster pace than its 2018, 2019, and 2020 vintages.”
