The firm upgraded the stock to "outperform" from "market perform" with a $175 price target
The shares of Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (NYSE:AAP) are up 2% at $156 this morning, after Raymond James upgraded the stock to "outperform" from "market perform" with a $175 price target. This upgrade reiterates the bullish sentiment among the brokerage community; coming into today, nine of the 16 in coverage sported a "buy" or better rating. Echoing this is a 12-month consensus target price of $174.80, which is a 14.2% premium to AAP's current perch.
Digging deeper, the security has spent the past two months consolidating below the $155 level. Prior to that, AAP had been carving out a channel of higher highs off its mid-March, seven-year low of $71.96. The shares remain stymied by their year-to-date breakeven level though, despite a 35.3% pop in the last six months.
That bullish analyst sentiment is reflected in the options pits, where calls are popular despite limited absolute volume. The stock sports a 50-day call/put volume ratio of 4.32 at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), which sits in the 80th percentile of its annual range. In simpler terms, this suggests a healthier-than-usual appetite for bullish bets of late.
Now certainly seems like a good time to take advantage of AAP options. This is per the security's Schaeffer's Volatility Index (SVI) of 45%, which sits in just the 24th percentile of all other annual readings, meaning the stock sports attractively priced premiums at the moment.