New High Rocket Lab Price Target as Wall Street Finally Catches On

On October 8, I increased my price target for Rocket Lab USA  (RKLB)  to a new Wall Street high $69, from my previous Street high of $63, based on a breakout from a pivot created by a Bull Flag pattern of continuance that ran from mid-July to late August.

On October 13, I increased my price target again to a Wall Street high of $74 from $69, as the shares finally put an end to what had been a parabolic move. The stock traded as high as $73.97 just a couple of days later, by the way.

Last week, Wall Street finally caught on. 

On (last) Monday, Kristine Liwag of Morgan Stanley, who is rated at five stars (of five) by TipRanks, increased her target price to $68 from $20. Liwag has never been bullish on Rocket Lab.

Two days later, Peter Arment of Robert W. Baird, who is also rated at five stars, initiated Rocket Lab with an "outperform" rating and a Street high target of $83. A rating of outperform is considered to be a "buy-equivalent." Arment is not merely rated at five stars, he is rated in the top 0.7% of the 10,084 analysts tracked at TipRanks. Simply put, he's one of the best among the best. 

Two days after that, Michael Leshock of KeyBanc, who too is rated at five stars, reiterated his "buy" rating on RKLB while increasing his target to $75 from $50.

Earnings Coming

Rocket Lab will report its third-quarter financial results after the closing bell on Friday, November 7. Wall Street is looking for an adjusted loss per share of $0.06 on revenue of about $151.75 million. That would compare to the year-ago comp of -$0.07, but would reflect year-over-year sales growth of roughly 45%. GAAP loss per share is seen at $0.10, which would be in line with the year-ago comparison.

Sales are seen growing more than 35% for the full year from a year ago and then accelerating more than 53% next year from this year. Full-year earnings are expected to improve from something like -$0.43 for this full year to something close to -$0.12 for 2026.

The Chart​

Readers will see ​that RKLB has started to develop a basing period of consolidation since our last discussion on the stock. The stock has been stopped at our $74 target or darned close to it on three occasions now and has found support close to $63 twice. Something is going to break. Fortunately, the 21-day exponential moving average (EMA) is running just below support. We'll find out really quickly should that $63 support crack just how interested the swing crowd is in this stock.

Relative strength is still quite robust even if it has not quite been able to make it stick in technically overbought territory. The daily moving average convergence divergence (MACD) is still postured bullishly, but that bullishness does appear to be waning. Those long the stock would like to see the histogram of the 9-day EMA pull away from the zero-bound and the 12-day EMA avoid its probable clash with the 26-day EMA that appears imminent.

Price Target: $85 (up from $74)

Pivot: $74 (recent high)

Add: Down to the 50-day simple moving average (currently $52)

Panic: Loss of the 200-day SMA (currently $34)

At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long RKLB equity.