Bloomin’ Brands price target raised to $27 from $25 at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley raised the firm’s price target on Bloomin’ Brands to $27 from $25 and keeps an Equal Weight rating on the shares. The firm is “less pessimistic now” than it was last year and thinks this year will look “somewhat normal,” with slower growth given key economic variables already softening and less pricing power, but “not much below historical trends for foodservice,” the analyst tells investors in a note on the Restaurants & Foodservice Distributors group. However, having rallied at both the start and end of 2023, with volatility in the middle, valuations in the group “don’t appear stretched, but neither are they especially compelling under our base case scenario,” the analyst added.