Zynga stock received no less than five price-target hikes
The shares of digital game maker Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) are up 2.1% to trade at $10.27 and hit a new eight-year high of $10.769 out of the gate this morning. This comes after the company's second-quarter earnings and revenue topped Wall Street forecasts. Zynga also boosted its full-year bookings forecast, and has received no less than five price-target hikes from analysts this morning. The highest comes from Piper Sandler, which raised its price target to $13 from $11.
The bull notes are surprising considering the baked in optimism toward ZNGA already. Coming into today, 14 of the 18 in coverage sported a "strong buy." Plus, the 12-month consensus target price of $11.59 is an 9.2% premium to current levels.
Zynga stock now boasts an impressive 68.6% year-to-date lead. Meanwhile, support has emerged at its 50-day moving average, a trendline that ZNGA has managed to capture pullbacks in the last six months.
Today's option pits are full of bullish activity. In the first hour of trading, over 27,000 calls have crossed the tape so far -- six times the intraday average, with volume pacing in the highest percentile of annual readings. The two most popular are the weekly 8/7 10- and 10.50-strike calls.
It's worth nothing that short interest is down significantly, off 21.5% in the last two reporting periods. Yet the 50.18 million shares sold short still represent a solid 5.4% of Zynga stock's available float.