demand for clothing over the past year has not exactly been great as more pressing needs like gas and grocery bills exert greater pull on consumers’ bank accounts but as consumer demand wavers analysts at barclays on wednesday said that urban outfitters inc is “among the best positioned” clothing chains following the strong firstquarter results that it reported a day earlier analysts at barclays led by adrienne yih upgraded urban outfitters urbn shares to overweight from equal weight citing accelerating sales growth more clothing sold at regular prices and improving inventory trends the analysts also raised their price target to 38 from 27 shares of urban outfitters which owns the women’s clothing chains free people and anthropologie as well as the clothing rental service nuuly jumped 163 on wednesday after rallying after hours on tuesday following its quarterly results the chain on tuesday reported betterthanexpected firstquarter results sales at anthropologie the company’s biggest chain by revenue climbed 13 during the quarter and 17 at free people group they fell 13 at urban outfitters where a younger consumer has been hit harder by rising rents and costs for essentials anthropologie and free people tend to target a higherincome bracket however urban outfitters stores make up less than 35 of the company’s total sales the barclays analysts said adding “the momentum at free people the women’s clothing chain anthropologie and nuuly outweighs the drag from uo” they said that in the nearly two decades that they’ve followed business trends at urban outfitters two factors have helped gauge the company’s momentum the store’s ability to sell products at normal prices and increased acceptance of springseason apparel which can translate into bigger gains in the backtoschool and fall seasons “based on the combination of this phenomenon in urbn’s history spanning various product and macro cycles as well as inflections in inventory risk inventory productivity and margin expansion we believe that urbn is positioned to be a ‘beat and raise’ story for the remainder of this year” the analysts said referring to a pattern of a company reporting quarterly results that beat wall street’s expectations and then raising its financial outlook urban outfitters reported after walmart inc wmt last week warned that higher prices for some groceries could jeopardize sales in other parts of its stores bigbox rival target corp tgt  which sells more of those discretionary goods noted “softening sales trends” when it reported quarterly results last week as well urban outfitters executives however said they saw no fluctuations in consumer buying patterns and they said that anthropologie consumers continued to snap up more “dressedup” categories dresses jackets shoes with heels and more casual fare “we currently see no signs of change in customer behavior” chief executive richard hayne said on urban outfitters’ earnings conference call on tuesday “no indication that customers are shopping less frequently buying pure items or trading down” most of the 11 analyst ratings on urban outfitters tracked by factset are “holds” shares of urban outfitters are up 756 over the past 12 months by comparison the sp 500 index spx is up 47 over that period