Carvana shares speed toward best day in more than two years

Shares of used-card retailer Carvana Co. CVNA, +40.07% were up more than 38% in Friday morning trading after flirting with what could be their best single-day percentage gain on record. Carvana’s stock was up 38.7% Friday morning and on track for its largest one-day gain since March 24, 2020, when it rose 43.0%. However, shares traded up as much as 69.1% earlier in the session. The rally came in the wake of what RBC Capital Markets analyst Brad Erickson called “another messy quarter,” though he noted that “directionally, efforts to improve profitability & efficiency are trending positively and no retail unit guidance takes a miss off the table.” Those dynamics were “good enough for the stock,” said Erickson, who has a sector perform rating on the stock but lowered his price target to $35 from $85 Friday. Stifel’s Scott Devitt saw signs of “stabilizing results” even as the company fell short of expectations for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda). “The company has made initial progress against its realigned operating plan which calls for significant cost leverage across the business,” Devitt wrote. Despite Friday’s rally, the stock is still down more than 86% over a 12-month span, as the S&P 500 has fallen almost 7% in the same frame.