Shares of QuantumScape shot up to $14.51 during today's morning trading session -- an increase of 6.7% that brings the stock 202.98% over its average analyst target price of $4.79. This may imply limited upside for the Auto Parts stock, whose analysts give it a consensus rating of hold, and target prices spanning from $2.5 to $8.0 dollars per share.
The market sentiment on QuantumScape seems pessimistic because the proportion of shorted shares in its float is quite high at 15.4%. Each short position represents an investor's expectation and hope that the stock's price will reverse course and start declining.
When a stock is sold short, it means an investor has borrowed shares of the stock from their broker, and then sold them at the going market price. The investor hopes for the price to decline, so that they might buy those shares back at a lower price in the future. Once they do, they can return the borrowed shares to their broker, and keep the profit they made on the transaction.
A possible indicator of market sentiment on a stock (besides its share price, of course) is the portion of institutional investors that make up its shareholders. Institutions such as banks, hedge funds, and wealth managers deploy significant resources towards identifying good investments. If they are invested heavily in a given company's stock, it could mean it's a good investment. Or it could mean the company is being targeted by a takeover attempt.
For what it's worth, institutions own 32.8% of QuantumScape's shares, which is an average amount. It means that many institutions are invested, but not to the extent that they would be in a stock such as Apple or Amazon, whose institutional ownership rates hover around 60%. Bear in mind that institutional ownership is just one piece of the puzzle in determining market sentiment, and you should not consider this factor alone in making an investment decision.
Overall, there is negative market sentiment on QuantumScape because its an analyst belief that shares are overpriced, a hold rating, an unusually large proportion of its shares sold short, and only a small number of institutional investors. Warren Buffett famously said that in the short term, markets are voting mechanisms, but in the long term, they are weighing mechanisms. This means that long term investors should be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.
Buffett was one of the fist investors to focus on free cash flow as a yardstick for a company's health. Here are QS's recent cash flows:
| Date Reported | Cash Flow from Operations ($ k) | Capital expenditures ($ k) | Free Cash Flow ($ k) | YoY Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | -274,555 | 62,131 | -336,686 | -3.74 |
| 2023 | -240,025 | 84,510 | -324,535 | 13.89 |
| 2022 | -218,024 | 158,845 | -376,869 | -47.74 |
| 2021 | -127,909 | 127,178 | -255,087 | -198.85 |
| 2020 | -61,263 | 24,093 | -85,356 | -65.49 |
| 2019 | -41,731 | 9,846 | -51,577 |
