2023-04-21 11:30:22 ET
BILL Holdings ( NYSE: BILL ) stock climbed 2.2% in Friday morning trading after UBS upgraded shares of the cloud-based software provider as the economic headwinds negatively impacting small businesses' spending have already been baked in.
Since the start of 2023, BILL ( BILL ) -- which mainly serves small and midsize businesses across the globe -- has seen its stock drop 28.3%.
It's "trading at roughly a turn discount to peers with similar revs growth, which we suspect is due to the material TPV (total payments volume) decel, SVB impact and rising competition concerns," analyst Taylor McGinnis wrote in a note.
McGinnis reckons that the greater deceleration in near-term SMB spending has already been largely reflected in Wall Street's transaction revenue estimates.
Also, with concerns about QuickBooks potentially becoming a serious contender in business-to-business payments, "it seems that any potential solution (nothing officially announced) would take time and effort before becoming a material threat to BILL," the note said.
The Buy rating disagrees with the Quant system rating of Hold and aligns with the average Wall Street analyst rating.
Seeking Alpha contributor Geoffrey Seiler last week also flagged BILL with a Buy rate as the stock traded at a "very attractive" multiple among high-growth Software-as-a-service names .
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BILL snags Buy rating at UBS as SMB spend slump already penciled in