Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) stock is up 2.4% to trade at $44.03 -- fresh off a record high of $44.13 -- after Goldman Sachs upgraded the media name to "buy" from "hold," and boosted its price target by $10 to $54 -- a more than 25% premium to last night's close. Analyst Brett Feldman said he expects CMCSA to "sustain double-digit growth ... over the next five years," amid steady increases in new broadband customers.
Analysts have been growing increasingly bullish on Comcast, with the vast majority of the 20 covering brokerages maintaining a "buy" or better rating on the stock, and not a single "sell" on the books. Plus, the average 12-month price target of $48.63 sits in uncharted territory.
Short sellers, meanwhile, have started to capitulate to the equity's upward momentum. Short interest fell 1.8% in the most recent reporting period. However, it would still take shorts more than four days to cover the remaining 69.73 million shares held by shorts, at CMCSA stock's average pace of trading. A continued round of short covering could keep the wind at the equity's back.
Looking closer at the charts, Comcast shares were already up more than 26% through Tuesday's close. More recently, the stock's 80-day moving average has served as a springboard, and a late-June bounce off this rising trendline has CMCSA up nearly 5% so far this month.