shares of c3ai inc were tracking toward their fifth straight session of declines friday as the software company failed to wow wall street analysts at its recent investor day the stock was tumbling more than 12 in friday’s session putting it on pace to log a 29 drop over the past five trading sessions if the losses carry through to the close losses to that degree would mark c3ai’s ai worst fiveday stretch since the period that ended april 11 when shares slid nearly 33 according to dow jones market data the recent action marks a cooling for a name seen as a buzzy play on the artificialintelligence trend c3ai makes enterprise ai software and while its stock is still up nearly 200 so far this year as ai mania has swept wall street there’s been some concern about how quickly the company will be able to capitalize financially on the craze see also palantir can be a big ai winner but finding a stock catalyst is now ‘more challenging’ analyst warns the company held a thursday investor day that in the view of deutsche bank’s brad zelnick “left a lot to be desired as there were no details on financials limited operational updates and investors for the most part didn’t attend” he acknowledged “the vast opportunity presented by ai” but said this week’s event “did nothing to ease our skepticism on the true differentiation of the company’s platform its traction with customers or its ability to hit its constantly evolving financial targets” zelnick rates the stock a sell with a 16 target price read nvidia has talked up ai the most lately but other highly chatty players may surprise you the lack of financial details seemed to be a common complaint among analysts “while the investor day was rich on color around the product and gotomarket efforts there were no financial updates as management reiterated that it remains on track to meet its targets and that the company has sufficient headcount in place to meet current pilot demand” morgan stanley’s sanjit singh wrote singh who rates the stock at underweight with a 20 target price is encouraged by the company’s “topoffunnel” demand and pilot progress but he remains concerned about the stock c3ai is in the midst of a transition to a consumptionbased business model that could weigh on shares he noted additionally he highlighted that c3ai shares were trading at a 14times multiple on the basis of enterprise value to calendar 2024 estimated sales which he said “underappreciates risk ahead in executing to the company’s product roadmap and driving workload growth in a competitive environment” jpmorgan’s pinjalim bora also keyed in on that multiple saying it was “a bit stretched given the hype around artificial intelligence” “netnet while we are encouraged by the traction in the business around pilots we are waiting to see proof points around conversion of the pilots to underwrite the assumptions around the consumptionbased pricing model” he wrote while sticking with his neutral rating read ai is going to change the way entertainment is made will it be for better or worse “at the end of the day with no incremental financial targets the investor day itself was not enough to move shares higher or deter us from our thesis” he wrote while maintaining his underperform rating and 14 target price “we continue to believe that it will be difficult for ai to substantially increase nonbaker hughes revenue which by our estimates is necessary to meet its fiscal year 2024 revenue guidance” da davidson’s gil luria took a somewhat similar view in a note to clients titled “narrative unchanged” although he rates the stock at neutral with a 30 target price “while few financial updates were provided we came away with a couple incremental data points and found the product deep dive helpful” luria wrote “we still view tailwinds from generative ai appropriately reflected in the stock” don’t miss ai could further an ‘erosion of the middle class’ unless congress takes action schumer says