What Happened:
Shares of accounting automation software maker Blackline (NASDAQ:BL) jumped 5.2% in the morning session after Piper Sandler analyst upgraded the stock's rating from Underweight (Sell) to Neutral and raised the price target from $55 to $62. The analyst highlighted improving cloud fundamentals at Blackline's partner, SAP (NYSE:SAP), adding, "The acceleration in current cloud backlog growth to 28% (vs. 27% last quarter) on a €3B ($3.2B) year-over-year increase suggests demand fundamentals for SAP cloud appear healthy despite macro uncertainty." After the initial pop the shares cooled down to $60.87, up 4.1% from previous close.
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What is the market telling us:
BlackLine's shares are somewhat volatile and over the last year have had 14 moves greater than 5%. In context of that, today's move is indicating the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
BlackLine is up 3.2% since the beginning of the year, but at $60.87 per share it is still trading 11.3% below its 52-week high of $68.65 from March 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of BlackLine's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,262.
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