Why Investors Were Showering Love on AppLovin Stock This Week

It isn't often that a stock gets a 74% price target raise from an analyst, but that's what happened to AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP). The next-generation adtech company, which has already been quite the torrid outperformer on the exchange, saw its share price swell across the past few days. According to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, it was notching an almost 13% gain week to date as of Friday before market open.

A trio of bulls maintained buys

Stifel weighed in on AppLovin with a new research note Thursday morning. In it, the analyst company upped -- perhaps I should say "catapulted" -- its price target to $435 per share. That's substantially higher than its previous take of $250. It nearly goes without saying that Stifel is bullish on the company; it maintained its existing buy recommendation in making the price target changes.

Not to be outdone, the same day Citigroup and BTIG both enacted hefty raises of their own. The former cranked its fair value assessment to $460 per share from the preceding $335, while BTIG's respective levels were $432 and $291. The two companies also kept their AppLovin buy recommendations intact.

The reasoning behind these moves differed somewhat, according to reports, but all three feel that the specialized tech company is standing before excellent opportunities, and has the means to exploit them. Stifel cited AppLovin's ability to harness and use data from its mediation platform, and waxed bullish about its move into the e-commerce advertising segment.

A bright future for digital advertising

Those price target increases might sound outsize, but AppLovin's stock has been quite the racehorse this year -- it's up by a staggering 851% year to date, and we haven't even reached New Year's. That's understandable, as the company is very well placed to take advantage of powerful increases in the digital advertising space, and as such has quite an exciting future.

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Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends AppLovin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.