New Rocket Lab Price Target After Significant Downgrade
An influential analyst has offered a harsh new verdict on the aerospace firm and we're revisiting our Wall Street high target price.
You're reading 0 of 1 free page.
Register to read more or Unlock Pro — 50% Off Ends Soon
Readers have very likely noticed that Rocket Lab (RKLB) , which is a long lime "Stocks Under $10" name and a long-time core Sarge-folio holding, is taking it on the chin on Thursday morning.
Why? Late Wednesday evening, analyst Michael Leshock of KeyBanc downgraded RKLB from "Overweight" which is a buy-equivalent to "Sector Weight." That's a hold-equivalent.
Leshock left his $75 target price in place, which begs the question of why he still had a $75 target on a stock that he considered to be a buy-equivalent when that stock first pierced the $75 level on December 22, 2025, and had not traded below $75 (not even for a second) since January 6, 2026.
Don't Get Me Wrong
Leshock is an outstanding sell-side analyst and the fact that he's slowing down on RKLB does make me pause to think.
Often, when supposedly highly ranked analysts take a negative shot at one of our "Stocks Under $10" victory stocks, I am quickly able to expose them as someone who has been wrong on that stock for a long time and is just trying to either dig in or camouflage a poor record.
That is not the case with Leshock. He has not been with the stock as long as we have, but he had a buy-equivalent rating on the name for two years. Leshock is also ranked by TipRanks, not just at five stars out five, but at number 216 of the 12,040 sell-side analysts tracked by the service. He has a directional success rate over two years of 93.55% with those picks generating a return of 118.2% over that time. So, we pay attention when he changes an opinion.
What Do the Charts Say?
While I respect Leshock, the charts are telling me a potentially different story. I know. Shocker, right?
The last time I showed you this chart was on January 7, little more than a week ago. Even with today's nasty selloff, the shares are trading higher over that time. When I wrote that piece, RKLB was trading at $83.80. Down 4% on Thursday, RKLB is trading with an $88 handle.
Now, I told readers last week that the upper trendline of my pitchfork model was going to be our pivot. At that time, the upper trendline ran at about $86. On Thursday morning, it runs very close to $96. Readers will also see on the Fibonacci extension model that a perfect 161.8% retracement of the early October top mid-November sell-off lands in between $95 and $96.
I will now make this level my pivot as at least it is stationary and correlates closely to what the pitchfork model is telling me. This, of course, will force my target price higher. Sorry, Leshock. I could be wrong. It could be time for profit taking, but I think we all see this as a positive momentum name and Thursday's downgrade does not change that for me.
Target Price: $110 (the high on Wall Street gets higher)
Pivot: $96 (retracement level)
Add: Down to 50-day SMA (currently $60)
Panic: Loss of 200-day SMA (currently $45)
At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long RKLB equity.
