Arm and Instacart add to losses after lukewarm analyst reports

SHARES of Arm Holdings and Instacart deepened their recent losses on Friday (Sep 22) after analysts gave lukewarm ratings to the two companies that recently held highly anticipated initial public offerings (IPOs).

Arm was last down 1.7 per cent at US$51.23. Earlier it dipped as low as US$50.35, below the US$51 price set in its IPO on Sep 13.

Arm surged on its first day on Wall Street and has fallen every day since then.

Grocery delivery app Instacart, formally known as Maplebear, fell 2.1 per cent to US$30.02, marginally above the US$30 price set in its IPO on Monday.

The weak performances of Arm and Instacart’s stocks since their market debuts add to doubts about whether a hoped-for revival in IPOs will materialise after a drought of more than 18 months.

In a client note, BTIG analyst Jake Fuller gave Instacart a “neutral” rating and warned that the company faces heavy competition from DoorDash and Uber Technologies in the slowly expanding market of grocery delivery.

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In another note, Susquehanna analysts assigned Arm a “neutral” rating and US$48 price target, saying the chip designer “appears to be pushing royalty rates to the limit, while also adding lower margin ‘subsystems’ revenue”.

That followed a Bernstein “underperform” rating with a US$46 price target earlier this week, and a “hold” assigned to Arm by Needham and Company on Sep 16.

Neutral and negative stock ratings are much less common on Wall Street than “buy” recommendations or other positive ratings. Of more than 10 thousand current analyst recommendations for S&P 500 companies, 56 per cent are positive, 39 per cent are neutral and 5 per cent are negative, according to LSEG data.

Meanwhile, shares of Klaviyo, which debuted on Wednesday, dipped 1.8 per cent to US$33.12. Still, the marketing automation firm’s stock remains above the US$30 IPO price.

The declines in Arm, Instacart and Klaviyo on Friday were in contrast to a 0.3 per cent gain in the Nasdaq. REUTERS