AeroVironment flies higher after Raymond James upgrades as orders accelerate

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AeroVironment (NASDAQ:AVAV) +14.9% in Thursday's trading after Raymond James upgraded shares to Outperform from Market Perform with a $100 price target at Raymond James, which cites "recent order momentum, strong spending backdrop, rising geopolitical tensions and palpable international interest in AVAV products."

Ray Jay analyst Brian Gesuale said he sees "an acceleration of orders since August that de-risks the consensus forecast, enables record backlog to persistently hover above $300M, and ultimately provides the air cover to raise our FY '23 and FY '24 estimates."

The company's "magnitude and breadth of orders [are the] best in a decade," with orders including the recent Puma order keeping backlog above $300M, according to Gesuale.

For its most recent quarter, AeroVironment (AVAV) posted an unexpected loss on revenues of $108M.