Boston, MA 10/09/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Billionaire Stephen Mandel has just acquired 5.3% stake in Pandora Media Inc (NYSE:P). This comes at a time when everyone with interest in stock trade was just beginning to wonder whether Pandora has enough gas to rally against Apple for the lucrative internet radio service.
It is reported that Mandel has purchased the stock eying a potential growth. This is also coming at a time when a number of equities analysts have raised their rating of the stock and assigned higher price objectives.
Equities analysts at Barrington Research on a note to investors published Wednesday, Oct. 2, raised their price target on Pandora to $31. The same day Wells Fargo & Co. also issued a note maintaining their “outperform” rating on the stock. In the last week of September, Canaccord Genuity upped their price objective on Pandora shares to $30, up from $25. Canaccord Genuity currently has a “buy” rating on the stock.
Pandora presently has a consensus rating of “hold” and price objective of $20.77.
In the past five quarters, Pandora has surprised analysts. For the Q2.13, Pandora realized $0.04 EPS, smashing $0.02 consensus estimate. The company earned $162 million in revenue for the quarter, an upside of 58% from the previous year’s similar quarter.
Even as Apple threatens to dim the fortunes of Pandora in the competition for ad-powered free-internet radio services, the management at Pandora is busy plotting new advertisement strategies to improve the company’s profitability. A lot of tweaks have since been implemented by the company for its internet radio service and these are hopped to stop user hemorrhage to Apple’s iTunes Radio.
That analysts have rated Pandora high even after Apple successfully launched its rival iTunes Radio means that there are still a lot in favor of Pandora. Analysts agree that if Pandora manages to maintain its user base, Apple will certainly have little damage on its fortunes. The only challenge is that Apple is entering the business as a superpower and has already indicated global roll out of its services to almost 100 countries.
Having Mandel in Pandora stock business should serve as a gesture that Pandora is still as stock worth adding to investment portfolio.
