Streaming music leader Spotify Technology surpassed 500 million active listeners in the first quarter, beating its target for the period. Spotify stock has been a top performer lately.
Spotify executives announced that the service had cracked the half-billion listener milestone at a media event on Wednesday. It also showed off its latest innovations, including a TikTok-style vertical home feed for its app.
Spotify stock rose 0.5% to close at 126.99 on Wednesday. On the stock market today, it fell 2.4% to 123.93 amid a broad market sell-off.
Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney reiterated his outperform rating on Spotify stock after the event. He has a price target of 185 on Spotify stock.
"We came away incrementally more constructive," Mahaney said in a note to clients. In addition to its better-than-expected figure for monthly active users, Spotify delivered an "impressive level of product innovation" at the event. Those innovations included the vertical home feed and new monetization tools such as Showcase.
Spotify Stock Is In Top 6% Of Stocks
Chief Executive Daniel Ek reiterated his goal of reaching 1 billion users by 2030.
The new home feed features an infinite scroll with multimedia like social media apps TikTok and Instagram. That includes audio and video clips to preview content such as music, podcasts and audiobooks. It also has an "AI DJ" for a highly curated experience.
Truist Securities analyst Matthew Thornton maintained his buy rating on Spotify stock with a 132 price target.
Spotify stock has an IBD Relative Strength Rating of 94 out of 99. That puts it in the top 6% of stocks for performance over the past 52 weeks.
On Jan. 31, Spotify stock broke out of a cup-with-handle base at a buy point of 104.10, according to IBD MarketSmith charts.
But it has a mediocre IBD Composite Rating of 68 out of 99, according to IBD Stock Checkup. IBD's Composite Rating combines five separate proprietary ratings into one easy-to-use rating. The best growth stocks have a Composite Rating of 90 or better.
Follow Patrick Seitz on Twitter at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
