AppLovin (NASDAQ:APP) shares surged as much as 19.4% in pre-open Thursday trading after the gaming-software company reported solid first-quarter results and offered a better-than-expected revenue outlook for this quarter.
For Q1, AppLovin reported a loss per share of $0.01 on revenue of $715 million, which compares to the consensus for a profit of $0.08 on revenue of $694.87M.
For Q2, AppLovin sees revenue between $710M and $730M, beating the consensus of $696.8M
BTIG analysts said the App Discovery business fueled the Q1 beat. The analysts have a Neutral rating on APP stock.
“To be more bullish we'd need to have more conviction behind a more pronounced sequential uptick in Axon performance/ budget gains,” they wrote.
BofA analysts hiked the price target by $3 to $21 per share as an upside surprise in the Software business “implies higher FY23 baseline.”
Still, they also reiterated a Neutral-rating as “further evidence of innovation-led share gains or an ad market recovery is likely needed to re-rate the stock.”