Snap Shares Pop After Upgrade from Long-time Skeptic at BTIG

Shares of snap were heading higher on Thursday after the company received an upgrade from BTIG.

BTIG is now recommending to investors to buy the stock and believes that Snap shares could even soar 50% over the next 12 months.

Analyst Richard Greenfield wrote, “We are increasingly confident that overseas direct response/performance advertisers are taking advantage of low relative bid prices.”

This is the first time Greenfield has had a “buy” rating on the stock.

“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,” Greenfield wrote. “Performance advertisers are laser focused on return on investment and spend (and spend more) where they see a compelling return.”

“We are increasingly confident that overseas direct response/performance advertisers are taking advantage of low relative bid prices on ad inventory in the U.S.,” he said.

“The good news for Snapchat is that performance advertising can scale rapidly enabling meaningful revenue beats,” Greenfield added. “It is critical for Snapchat to convince higher quality brands of the performance ROI that can be found on the platform.”

Disclaimer: We have no Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) and have not been compensated for this article.