C3.ai ‘s current trading price looks lofty compared to its growth potential, according to JPMorgan. The firm downgraded shares of the enterprise artificial intelligence software company to an underweight rating from neutral. JPMorgan left its $28 price target unchanged, implying that the stock could tumble 33% from its Tuesday closing price. Shares of C3.ai have soared 45% in 2024. Analyst Pinjalim Bora said that the downgrade was largely based on the stock’s valuation, which he now considers to be stretched. AI YTD mountain C3.ai YTD graph “Given the already rich valuation, which is likely already pricing in a much better growth-plus-profile, which we find difficult to underwrite currently, we expect shares to underperform our coverage for 2025,” the analyst wrote. “While we understand that C3.ai is going after a massive and rapidly evolving opportunity around Artificial Intelligence, we think its uneven and subpar growth-plus-margin performance leaves a lot to be desired, and it remains a big outlier compared to a broader base of peers trading at over 10x FTM revenue.” While Bora commended the company for improving its revenue growth as of late, the analyst added that this growth has come at high incremental costs and looks more impressive considering the firm’s muted growth in year-ago quarters. Bora also pointed out that C3 is much smaller in scale, but still growing at the same rate as peers that are five times larger.
