Investing.com - Snapchat’s parent company soared in midday trading on Thursday after a surprise buy recommendation for the troubled social media company.
BTIG Research boosted its rating on Snap (NYSE:SNAP) to buy from neutral, setting the price target at $15, according to Briefing.com.
“Your initial reaction is likely why now and what changed, as virtually everything that could go wrong for Snapchat over the past couple years since going public has gone wrong,” the note read.
BTIG Research cited the company’s change in leadership, user stickiness and performance advertising growth as reasons for the upgrade.
Snap rose 11% midday, but was still nearly 33% below its IPO level of $17.
Meanwhile, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) slipped 1.6% as users were outraged over a 17-hour partial outage of its apps. Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) inched down 0.14%, while the communication services sector was down 0.3%.