On an awful Friday for the stock market, JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) didn’t quite manage to navigate through the storm. The airline’s stock price took a nearly 6% hit, due in no small part to a rather assertive price target cut from an analyst. The dive didn’t exactly make JetBlue an outlier, however, as the benchmark S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) declined at roughly the same rate.
The last thing any publicly traded company needed that day was a price target cut, but that’s what JetBlue received as the market roared to life this morning. Analyst Helane Becker of TD Cowen reduced her fair-value assessment on the carrier’s stock to $4 per share from the previous $6 for a 33% reduction. Despite that aggressive move, she maintained her hold recommendation on the company.
Becker’s chop came one day after another such move, in this case made by Bank of America‘s Andrew Didora. On Thursday, he also took a large pair of scissors to his JetBlue price target; it’s now $4.25, from the preceding $5.25. Interestingly, despite the new level being slightly higher than Baker’s, Didora rates JetBlue as an underperform (sell, in other words).
According to reports, Didora’s bearish take is based on weakening consumer demand. This isn’t exclusive to JetBlue, as the analyst has cut estimates and price targets for a clutch of U.S. airline stocks.
The popularity of travel and tourism in the wake of the stay-at-home coronavirus pandemic years seems to be fading. To a degree the novelty has worn off, and these days, the U.S. consumer is rightfully concerned about how budgets will be impacted by the economic fallout from the recently imposed tariffs. I don’t fault anyone for being more cautious about airline stocks now.
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