Levi Strauss price target raised to $17 from $14 at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley analyst Alex Straton raised the firm’s price target on Levi Strauss to $17 from $14 and keeps an Equal Weight rating on the shares. Levi met Q4 EPS expectations with “one of its strongest 4Q EBIT margins in history,” but gross margin and SG&A control were not enough to drive EPS upside against ongoing revenue headwinds, the analyst tells investors. Initial FY24 guidance was set below Street forecasts, but “strikes us as beatable across line items,” added the firm, which came away from the report “incrementally positive on LEVI’s 2H rate-of-change inflection potential.”