Carvana shares spike following JPMorgan rating, price target upgrade

Investing.com -- Shares in Carvana (NYSE:CVNA) surged on Monday after analysts at JPMorgan upgraded their rating of the online used car dealer to "neutral" from "underweight," citing improvements in "productivity, costs and culture."

In a note to clients, the analysts also lifted their price target to $40 a share, up from $25.

The stock has spiked by more than 770% so far this year, as the Arizona-based company has moved to overhaul its operations to solidify its balance sheet and secure positive cash flows. The restructuring push has included an exchange of some of its outstanding bonds for new notes that would be backed by Carvana's assets.

Carvana was previously a pandemic-era darling offering customers the chance to buy used cars during a time when the supply of new vehicles was constrained by a global chip crunch. But, more recently, Carvana has seen demand falter as more consumers rein in spending in response to elevated inflation and broader economic uncertainty.

"We believe Carvana’s approach to retailing used vehicles had given it a multi-year head start in the online-only space of a fragmented used vehicle industry, allowing it to expand at a rapid pace," the JPMorgan analysts said. However, they added that "this came at a cost that has now come to hurt during a sharp pull-back in industry volumes due to higher rates and higher prices."