Align Technology price target lowered to $370 from $415 at Piper Sandler

Piper Sandler lowered the firm’s price target on Align Technology to $370 from $415 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. With September and full Q3 U.S. ortho data in hand, the firm sees results that finished near where history would suggest for normal market seasonality. Skeptical investors are seemingly using the lack of upward deviation in demand trends combined with current macro/geopolitical unknowns as reasons for staying cautious even after a large pullback in the stock over the past month. Piper doesn’t have a “positive catalyst” that investors are clamoring for with this stock, but was not convinced an earnings beat is even necessary to push shares higher as buy-side concerns look to be ahead of sell-side modeling for the second half of 2023 and 2024. As such, the firm is taking a contrarian view of the risk/reward given current sentiment/positioning, and given that it sees benefits that should accrue to Align over coming quarters from SmileDirectClub’s (SDC) bankruptcy.