Affirm Stock Jumps. Why J.P. Morgan Upgraded Shares After Earnings Tumble

When Affirm Holdings took a tumble on Wednesday despite a great quarterly report at the consumer-lending company, Mizuho Securities analysts saw a buying opportunity.

Now another Wall Street team is saying the same.

J.P. Morgan analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce upgraded shares of Affirm to Overweight from Neutral and lifted their target for the price to $43 from $41 in a Thursday report titled “Not Letting a Good Sell Off Go to Waste.”

A day prior, Affirm stock fell 9.5% to $31.58. “Following a fantastic F3Q with better than expected GMV and an upbeat outlook, AFRM is trading lower in sympathy with SHOP, which is seeing a -19% decline in the stock amid soft guidance and operating expense concerns,” Mizuho analysts wrote on Wednesday.

Affirm stock’s reaction to Shopify’s results is overblown, they continued, saying that sales via the company account for about 10% of its gross merchandise value, a metric that tracks usage of the service.

The team maintained a Buy rating on the stock with a target of $65 for the price.

J.P. Morgan says investors believe Shopify contributed to Affirm stock’s decline, adding that a Bloomberg article about the dangers of buy now, pay later may also have weighed on the shares.

“Zooming out, Shop Pay, which offers AFRM’s financing solutions, posted another quarter of >50% volume growth, and the notion people are prioritizing BNPL repayment is actually good for companies like AFRM (and supported by their own credit trends), and, we believe, speaks to the perceived utility of the product,” J.P. Morgan said.

Affirm stock is down about 35% this year, giving back most of the gains since its analyst day in November despite strong results for multiple quarters, they said. That creates “an attractive entry point,” they added.

Affirm stock was up 3.9% at $32.86 Thursday, while the S&P 500 was up 0.4%.