Cava, Moderna, Airbnb: Trending tickers

Cava (CAVA) stock climbed Tuesday as the IPO lockup expiration allows insiders to sell shares. The Mediterranean food chain notes there are currently no Wall Street "Sell" ratings on the stock.

Moderna (MRNA) has announced Chief Commercial Officer Arpa Garay will step down, after joining the company in April 2022. CEO Stephane Bancel will assume Garay's responsibilities.

Barclays downgraded Airbnb (ABNB) to "Underweight" from "Equal Weight" on concerns that "pent-up travel demand will get exhausted." The firm cited a weakening travel outlook for 2024 and increased pressure from hotels as other reasons for the downgrade.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video transcript

- Cava shares surging today as the IPO lockup expires. Cava Insider is now able to sell their shares. You can look there, it's up more than 14% in today's trade. So Julie, a couple of things. One is, I mean, it's been a nice run since that June IPO, moving higher today, lockup expired. Most analysts covering this name on fans. They have a buy rating eight buys, four holds, and zero sells right now.

- This is weird.

[LAUGHS]

- Let's just say it. This is weird.

[LAUGHS] It is unusual to see a lockup period expire, and a stock go up, especially go up this much. Usually what a lockup period expiring means is that insiders, as you said, can now sell the shares. If the idea is that they're able to sell the shares, then that would put pressure on the stock.

But that isn't what's happening in this case now. We have seen the stock go down a little bit in the days running up to this, so perhaps you had already this reaction beforehand. But it's unclear to me exactly what is going on here. As you say, folks are very bullish on it. And we did see the stock IPO at $22 in June and--

- It's been a nice pop.

- It's been one of the certainly outperformers within the IPO universe, if you will. So I've got emails out to a couple of analysts trying to figure out what's going on here. So if we get an update, I'll come back and try and--

- Waiting for it.

- What's going on. Let's talk about Moderna too. Those shares are falling, after the company announced a reorganization. It's working to drive sales of its COVID-19 vaccine. One of those changes is the departure of the company's chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, who just joined in April 2022, and effectively CEO Stéphane Bancel is now going to be taking on that role, taking on a sales and marketing role.

The street does not seem to like this, given the reaction that we're seeing in the shares today. Basically that raises some questions about the strategy of the company that it would need to do this and the departure.

- Yeah, I mean, Moderna has been under a lot of pressure. I mean, the stock is now down more than 50% this year. I think there's just broad questions about what the plan, the business looks like in this post-pandemic world, where sales of COVID vaccines are slowing.

Now, Moderna we know is looking to expand new vaccines for flu, for cancer. But remember just last month, they told investors they're looking for revenue to drop next year. And in fact said, they're looking for revenue to drop worse than the street was banking on. So you've seen them under pressure. It's been tough going, and not a ton of confidence among analysts either covering this name.

- No, definitely not.

- All right, last one here. Shares of Airbnb, they are edging lower in today's trade. That's after a downgrade at Barclays. The team cutting the stock to underweight from equal weight, on a cautious travel outlook for 2024. So Barclays not believers, they were at equal weight, and now they go to underweight, which is the equivalent of a sell. Their target goes to 100.

What they say is, they have data, Julie, telling them that the short-term rental demand is plateauing, maybe even worse than plateauing and competition from hotels is increasing. And what it sounds like is they're just, just generally more cautious on travel broadly heading into 2024.

- Yeah, just basically overall it sounds like the slowing of the trend that we have been seeing. And they're also talking about the regulatory pressures that we have seen on Airbnb, right, where in certain cities they've cracked down on the ability of people to Airbnb their properties. They said we expect EBITDA growth to slow and normalize, and multiples will likely come down even if the premium to peers persists.

Again, that note from Barclays, the analyst there led by Trevor Young and Ross Sandler. You've been talking about some of these other picks and what the street vibe is. In this case, there are six sells on Airbnb, which is about 15% of the analyst ratings, and about 54% of them are at a hold rating. So about 32% are at buys, so that's how it breaks down

- Yeah, also we should note that Barclays also downgrades Expedia to equal weight. The stock is, listen, that's a stock that just roared this year, it's up more than 60%. So they are saying, listen, now it makes sense to lock in some profits.

- Yeah, it looks like they're like booking as their overweight pick here.

- Yeah.

- So we'll see if they said, stick with scale, in terms of what to like within travel.