FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The shares of Hellofresh have continued to recover from their recent record low. A somewhat more optimistic commentary by JPMorgan analyst Marcus Diebel was the trigger this Tuesday. He canceled the "Negative Catalyst Watch" warning for the cooking box mail order company. This increased short covering ("short covering rally"). However, the French investment bank Exane BNP Paribas dampened the mood again somewhat by lowering its price target.

At EUR 5.674, the shares recovered a good 28% from their record low on Friday and only stopped at their 50-day line. From their multi-year high in September 2023, they had recently suffered a sharp fall in price of almost 87%. This year alone, Hellofresh shares have fallen by 69%, making them the weakest of all MDax companies.

The downward trend was particularly sharp this year when Hellofresh withdrew its medium-term targets in March. After the management had already slashed its annual targets for 2023 four months earlier, this did not go down well at all. Investors and analysts increasingly questioned the credibility of the company's forecasts.

However, JPMorgan analyst Diebel no longer sees any major negative factors, at least in the short term. He wrote that the cooking box business in North America, which had been the decisive negative factor in recent quarters, was showing signs of stabilization and left the share at "Neutral" with a price target of EUR 7.

Investors were probably somewhat encouraged by this assessment. In addition, there are now many speculators in the share, who have had to close out their short positions in view of the recent sharp rise in the share price. Against the backdrop of more than a year and a half of falling share prices and constant bad news from management, they had increasingly bet on further falling share prices with short positions. Some of the speculators are now likely to have cashed in by buying shares on the market. Others may have been forced to buy if their short position went too far against them.

This short covering rally has recently been curbed somewhat, as analyst Alistair Johnson, who has taken over the valuation of Hellofresh shares at Exane BNP Paribas, remains critical. Ahead of the half-year report expected on August 13, he revised his estimates for the company, lowered the price target from EUR 5.50 to EUR 4.00 and reiterated his "underperform" rating.

For the full year 2024, Johnson only expects Hellofresh to achieve organic sales growth of 2 percent. This puts him at the lower end of the range forecast by Hellofresh and 4 percent below the average analyst estimate./ck/ag/mis