Monday, December 17, 2018

Analysts Remain In Favor Of Aphria Inc. (APHA)

The price of Aphria Inc. (NYSE:APHA) currently stands at $5.6 after it went up by $0.37 or 7.07% and has found a strong support at $5.04 a share. If the APHA price drops below that critical support, then it would lead to a bearish trend. In the short-term, a dip below the $4.47 mark would also be bad for the stock as it means that the stock would plunge by 20.18% from its current position. However, if the stock price is able to trade above the resistance point around $5.98, then it could likely surge higher to try and break the upward resistance which stands at $6.35 a share. Its average daily volatility over the past one month stands at 13.81%. The stock has plunged by 13.39% from its 52-weeks high of $4.85 which it reached on Sep. 01, 2018. In general, it is 33.04% above its 52-weeks lowest point which stands at $3.75 and this setback was observed on Jun. 12, 2018.
Analysts have predicted a price target for Aphria Inc. (APHA) for 1 year and it stands at an average $19.28/share. This means that it would likely increase by 244.29% from its current position. The current price of the stock has been moving between $4.85 and $5.79. Some brokerage firms have a lower target for the stock than the average, with one of them setting a price target as low as $7. On the other hand, one analyst is super bullish about the price, setting a target as high as $28.
The APHA stock Stochastic Oscillator (%D) is at 43.9%, which means that it is currently neutral. The shares P/S ratio stands at 42.2 which compares to the 19.89 recorded by the industry or the 21.76 by the wider sector. The stock currently has an estimated price-earnings (P/E) multiple of 0, which is lower than the 38.62 multiple of 12-month price-earnings (P/E). The company’s earnings have gone down, with a quarterly decrease rate of 0% over the past five years.
Analysts view Aphria Inc. (NYSE:APHA) as a Buy, with 0 consensus rating. Reuters surveyed 8 analysts that follow APHA and found that 1 of those analysts rated the stock as a Hold. The remaining 7 were divided, with 7 analyst rating it as a Buy or a Strong Buy while 0 analysts advised investors to desist from buying Aphria Inc. (APHA) shares or sell it if they already own it.

Aphria (APHA) is trying to recover from a near $1.1 billion loss in value after a harsh short report came out suggesting the Canadian cannabis company was defrauding investors to benefit insiders. The report showed compelling photographic evidence of Latin American assets including offices and farm spaces that the company reported spending thousands of dollars more on than the actual property cost. The stock plummeted around 25% overnight following the publication of the report.
Cormark analyst Jesse Pytlak believes the allegations against Aphria insider and founding member Andy DeFrancesco were misdirected due to the fact that DeFrancesco is not a director or executive.
Pytlak anticipates shares of APHA will remain in a volatile position in the short-term while the company’s leadership try to regain credibility with investors. Though the analyst believes this could take some time, he remains positive about Aphria’s position in the market. Pytlak notes APHA consistently proves its abilities to operate and he does not expect the recent news will take away from that. The analyst notes the selloff for APHA is now overdone based on the underlying strength of the company’s core Canadian business.
With that, the analyst reiterates a Buy recommendation but lowers his target price from $27 to $15, which shows about 168% potential upside from where the stock is currently trading.
“With respect to the LATAM assets, the $193 MM all-stock price tag is consistent with the valuations of similar transactions. While undisclosed, we think that much of the purchase price was ascribed to the acquired Colombian assets and point to Canopy Growth’s ~$198 MM acquisition of Colombian assets also announced in July, and Aurora Cannabis’ ~$290 MM acquisition of ICC Labs announced in September as relative valuation markers. Full stop, the hard assets acquired by APHA are very early stage; however, this perspective overlooks the inherent value of the acquired suite of licenses that may allow APHA to become an early mover in jurisdictions that have the potential to become strong domestic markets and global centers of low-cost cannabis supply,” Pytlak said.
In order to present a base case valuation on the stock, Pytlak is removing any international contribution from his forecast. This makes the new revenue forecast $80 million and $383 million for FY19 and FY20 respectively.
Overall, Wall Street likes the risk/reward with Aphria. Out of 11 analysts, 9 are bullish, 1 is sidelined and 1 bearish. The consensus price target of $14.50 shows a potential upside for the stock of about 159%.

Aphria Inc. shares were trading at $5.55 per share on Monday morning, down $0.05 (-0.89%). Year-to-date, APHA has declined -62.37%, versus a -1.33% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

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