ODFL - Old Dominion Freight Line gains after Evercore ISI upgrade

2023-05-17 09:28:10 ET

Evercore ISI upgraded Old Dominion Freight Line ( NASDAQ: ODFL ) to an Outperform on Wednesday after having the transportation stock lined up with an In-Line rating.

Analyst Jonathan Chappell and team asked why are all the next big things better than the king when looking at the upside for ODFL.

Chappell does think the path to relative EPS outperformance for the national blue chip LTL player is more challenging, especially with a volume headwind. However, he noted that ODFL has trailed peers this year despite being historically been rewarded for a massive margin gap.

"We acknowledge that the bar for the peer group is lower and that the path to better-than-average growth may be clearer, but in the macro backdrop required for the others to post volume and margin expansion, ODFL will also return to material top and bottom-line growth."

The view is that choppy markets alone could result in a flight to quality to ODFL and the reversion opportunity for ODFL is called robust.

Evercore ISI assigned a price target on Old Dominion Freight Line of $350.

Shares of Old Dominion Freight Line rose 1.85% in premarket action on Wednesday to land at $302.44. The transports stock is up about 6% on a year-to-date basis.

More on Old Dominion Freight Line:

• A Freight Recession Could Finally Allow Us To Buy Old Dominion
• More articles from Seeking Alpha analysts
• Relative strength index and moving averages
• Seeking Alpha's Quant Rating for Old Dominion

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