Analysts are weighing in on software provider
Nice Ltd (ADR) (NASDAQ:NICE), real estate marketplace
Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG), and healthcare stock
athenahealth, Inc (NASDAQ:ATHN). Here's a quick roundup of today's bearish brokerage notes on NICE, ZG, and ATHN.
- NICE is down 0.6% at $69.13, following a downgrade to "in-line" from "outperform" by Imperial Capital, although the brokerage firm also boosted its price target to $76 from $74. J.P. Morgan Securities also raised its price target on the software stock to $75 from $74. NICE has taken several strong bounces off its 50-week moving average in the past year, translating into a 52-week gain of 21.5%. In the options pits, near-term option players are more put-skewed than usual toward the stock, with Nice Ltd's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 1.17 sitting just 5 percentage points below an annual peak.
- ZG is trading higher, up 1.2% at $37.79, in spite of a downgrade to "equal-weight" from "overweight" at Morgan Stanley. The brokerage firm said that while it remains "bullish in the long-term opportunity, the share price is approaching our target price ... which causes us to move to the sidelines." ZG is up almost 67% year-over-year, and has recently established a foothold in the $37-$38 region -- site of its previous highs -- after an early December bull gap. Short sellers may be sweating, too. With 5.7% of ZG's float sold short, it would take more than 17 days of trading to cover these bearish bets, at Zillow Group, Inc.'s average volume.
- ATHN is trading 2.2% lower at $120.37, after a price-target cut to $95 from $110 at Jefferies, which also reiterated its "underperform" rating on the shares. ATHN is down more than 20% year-over-year, and is staring up at its 50-week moving average. A recent rally brought the shares right up to this stern layer of resistance, but today's decline has the stock back below it -- having failed to close north of here on a weekly basis since last March. In the option pits, short-term traders have rarely been as put-skewed toward athenahealth, Inc as they are now. In fact, the stock's SOIR of 1.68 ranks in the 97th annual percentile.
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