Shares of Aveanna Healthcare Holdings Inc. dropped% in afternoon trading Monday, even as almost all of the analysts who started covering the home-care company recommended buying. The stock has closed every day, since it went public on April 29, below its initial public offering price of $12. Of the 11 analysts surveyed by FactSet, 10 initiated Aveanna with the equivalent of buy ratings, while the average price target of $15.50 was 29.2% above the IPO price. Meanwhile, analyst Lisa Gill at J.P. Morgan, which was one of the lead underwriters of Aveanna’s IPO, started the company at neutral with a $14 stock price target. Despite her less-than-enthusiastic stance, Gill said Aveanna has “ample room for growth” with its business segments, as it has a market share of less than 1% of the $107 billion total addressable market (TAM). She wrote that she is “constructive” on Aveanna’s potential to achieve high growth by increasing market share and through acquisitions. Meanwhile, she believes current “discounted valuation” is a result of Aveanna’s higher leverage and lower organic growth rate versus its peers. Since going public, the stock has closed in a range of a closing high of $11.80 on May 3 and a low of $10.06 on May 13. The stock’s decline comes on a day that the Renaissance IPO ETF rallied 1.9% and the S&P 500 climbed 1.2%.
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