penn national gaming inc shares have performed so poorly in the past year that longtime defiantly bearish analyst carlo santarelli at deutsche bank said he no longer recommends selling even as he still believes the risk is to the downside the stock penn was little changed afternoon trading friday to sit just above the oneyear closing low of 5626 on nov 10 in a research note with “it is what we thought it was” in its title santarelli upgraded penn national to hold after being at sell for the past 17 months he kept his stock price target at 31 however which implied tk downside from current levels “since our downgrade and after numerous character assassinations we stuck with our sell rating because it was based on fundamentals and ultimately we felt we were right and over time the fundamentals would prevail” santarelli wrote he said his sell call in june 2020 was based on the belief that penn’s margin opportunity would prove to be “considerably less” than its peers the value investors placed on sports betting and igaming was “exaggerated” and the overall valuation was stretched after the stock ended june 2020 at 3054 the stock rocketed more than four fold to a record close of 13647 on march 15 2021 “during a time when retail trading and option buying took off and fueled by numerous social media posts regarding the future success of the company shares memed to almost 140” santarelli wrote since that high the stock has plunged nearly 60 and while the price was still nearly double what it was at the end of june 2020 it santarelli said it has “massively underperformed the regional peers” over the same time even worse penn’s stock has tumbled 326 year to date while shares of boyd gaming corp byd have rallied 449 caesars entertainment inc czr have climbed 419 golden entertainment inc gden have soared 1538 and red rock resorts inc rrr have shot up 1021 the sp 500 index spx has climbed 245 over the same time for deutsche bank based on a 12month view of the total shareholder return a sell rating means the analyst recommends selling the stock while a hold rating means the analyst recommends neither buy or sell the stock’s selloff this year was highlighted by the 211 plunge on nov 4 the biggest oneday selloff since march 2020 after the company reported a thirdquarter profit that fell well short of expectations to make matters worse allegations also emerged that david portnoy founder of barstool sports of which penn owns a 36 equity stake was aggressive and rough with women don’t miss penn national sheds 269 billion in valuation after earnings miss allegations against barstool’s portnoy in the end santarelli said penn was what he thought it was “a a strong regional gaming operator with a solid clevel and operational management team that was set up poorly from a margin perspective relative to peers coming out of the pandemic who overhyped a sports betting story to drive the stock and made some questionable at the time and more highly questionable these days igamingrelated acquisitions in our view” read more about penn national’s acquisition of thescore from score media for about 20 billion