Piper Sandler upgraded the stock to "overweight" from "neutral"
The shares of UTZ Brands Inc (NYSE:UTZ) are up 3.4% at $18.78 at last check, after Piper Sandler upgraded the snack giant to "overweight" from "neutral," with an added price-target hike to $22 from $18. D.A. Davidson and Credit Suisse raised their price targets as well -- to $24 and $22, respectively. These bull notes come on the back of yesterday's news that Utz Brands is acquiring Truco Enterprises, the owner of On The Border tortilla chips, for $480 million.
Piper Sandler is joining an already bullish brokerage bunch, with three of the four analysts at a "strong buy" coming into today. Meanwhile, the 12-month consensus price target of $21.43 is a 17.8% premium to last night's close.
On the charts, UTZ is extending yesterday's impressive climb to trade even closer to its August 31 all-time high of $19.16. Up around 86% year-over-year, the equity has broken out above a slew of short-term moving averages -- yesterday bouncing off the 20-day moving average.
Options bulls are taking note as well, with 551 calls across the tape so far -- seven times what's typically seen at this point. The April 20 call is the most popular, followed by the November 20 call. Echoing this, calls have drastically outweighed puts in the last two weeks, per UTZ's 10-day call/put volume ratio of 16.43 at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX).