Voya Financial stock receives upgrade on inflationary strength

Piper Sandler upgraded Voya Financial stock to Overweight from Neutral and raised its price target.

Video Transcript

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RACHELLE AKUFFO: It's time for Triple Play, the three stocks that we're watching in the final 30 minutes of trading. We've got Voya, Poshmark, and Nike on deck. Now my pick is Voya Financial. That's the stock of the retirement, investment, and employee benefits company. Now we did see that actually boosted, thanks to an upgrade from Piper Stanley. You see the stock there, though, relatively flat at the moment.

Now, the analyst John Barnidge went from overweight to overweight from neutral, currently trading, as you can see there, in positive territory, though, just down about 1% for the month. Now, Barnidge also upgraded the price target from $65 to $70. Now, this is partly due to Voya's attractive valuation, but you also have a large portion of its portfolio, about 70%, in Wealth Solutions and 15% in Health Solutions. And these do tend to fare well during inflationary periods. They're also likely to weather a recession better than others.

You also have an employee benefits company that they are in this tight labor market. That means a higher likelihood that contributions to employee health benefits and retirement plans are going to continue as well. But we are seeing the stock is down about 0.7% there for the year. You have investor sentiment that's still restrained, though, because we have this broader market volatility, Seana.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, Rachelle, you mentioned that bullish call here from the analyst. He also said that the recent acquisition of Allianz Global Investors US Funds enhances distribution, also limits the FX exposure, which we know has been so challenging here for a number of companies, as we have seen the surge in the dollar in recent months. Valuation materially lower than some of its competitors out there. So that $70 price target there implying a 15% upside for the stock.