A little-known travel stock surged on earnings. Wall Street says buy
Shares of corporate travel and expense management provider Navan soared after its latest earnings, but at least two analysts on Wall Street say its growing use of artificial intelligence is a key driver of future upside. Both Goldman Sachs and Loop Capital reiterated bullish recommendation on Navan after it reported fourth-quarter earnings post-market Wednesday. The stock soared more than 37% this week. Navan earned an adjusted 2 cents per share in its latest quarter, while analysts polled by FactSet had estimated a loss of 22 cents per share. Revenue of $177.9 million also topped analysts’ expectations of $162.2 million. Additionally, Navan forecast current-quarter and full-year revenue above consensus estimates as well. Investors drove Navan shares 43% higher on Thursday, but the stock is still down more than 50% from its $25 per share initial public offering last October. Goldman was one of two lead underwriters and Loop Capital was one of three co-managers. NAVN 6M mountain NAVN 6M chart Goldman has a $23 price target on the stock, reflecting upside of 88% from Friday’s close. Loop expects the stock to rally 63.8% to $20. Both investment banks point to Navan’s earnings beat as a catalyst for their optimism. “The quarter benefited from strong sales execution, faster onboarding of large customers, and competitive wins against legacy incumbents. Management’s tone remained upbeat on both the business and the broader travel environment, prompting strong yet prudent FY27 (C2026) guidance that calls for 24% revenue growth at the midpoint and meaningful margin improvement,” wrote Loop Capital analyst Mark Schappel. Loop regards Navan as an “under-the-radar” stock, although Schappel said he trimmed his price target to $22 due to narrower price-to-earnings and other multiples across the sector. ‘Long-term beneficiary’ “We continue to view Navan as a long-term beneficiary of the digital disruption in the travel management space — a large market where incumbents have been slow to innovate,” the Loop analyst wrote Wednesday. “We continue to believe NAVN remains an under-the-radar small-cap with outsized return potential.” Goldman analyst Gabriela Borges applauded Navan’s use of artificial intelligence as a differentiator. “Navan outlined how their product strategy, enhanced by AI, will widen the moat vs. fast-follower peers and incumbents,” she said. “We continue to view Navan an under-appreciated software asset with evident technological advantages which are driving business acceleration and a clear path to durable growth at solid unit economics.” For instance, she noted that Navan Cognition, the AI layer of its tech stack, is able to leverage internal data and models to provide better, and up-to-10-times faster, outcomes versus a new entrant leveraging generic large language models. Navan is also able to allocate human support resources to more complex cases because Ava, its AI-powered customer service agent, now handles 55% of customer support volume, Borges continued. The Goldman analyst added that Navan Edge, the company’s new hyper-personalized travel assistance, will also allow it to better serve a portion of the total addressable market in business travel. TravelClaw, announced on March 23, is a new agentic layer that will offer customers proactive service, she said.
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