Twitter Inc.’s stock dropped 1.6% in premarket trade Monday, after Oppenheimer turned bearish on the social media company, saying the stock rallied too much on takeover speculation. Analyst Jason Helfstein cut his rating to underperform, after being at perform since December 2014. He established a stock price target of $17, which is 25% below Friday’s closing price of $22.62. The stock shot up 21% on Friday, the biggest one-day gain in its history, after a CNBC report that the company was nearing a deal. “We believe a media company is the most likely purchaser and would not pay meaningfully more than the valuation implied by our price target,” Helfstein wrote in a note to clients. “Last, we see no meaningful increase in engagement from the Olympics or the NFL games, further diminishing the probability of a deal.” Among the concerns Helfstein listed about Twitter were slowing user growth, poor product implementation, decreasing user engagement, inferior advertising technology, platform safety issues and strong competition. Despite Friday’s surge, Twitter’s stock had lost 2.3% year to date through Friday, while the S&P 500 had gained 5.9%.
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