BofA Initiates Coverage Of Veritone With A Buy, Says aiWARE Platform A Key Differentiator

Veritone Inc (NASDAQ: VERI) shares gained 1.6% on Wednesday after some new bullish comments from one Wall Street analyst.

The Analyst: Bank of America analyst Koji Ikeda initiated coverage of Veritone with a Buy rating and a $22 price target.

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The Thesis: In the initiation note, Ikeda said Veritone's key differentiator is its aiWARE platform.

"We believe that aiWARE has the potential to be a powerful platform that organizations can leverage to drive efficiency anywhere cognitive processing of unstructured and structured data is needed," he said.

Bank of America estimates Veritone has a total addressable market size of $27 billion. In addition to aiWARE, Ikeda listed several other factors that provide a competitive moat for Veritone, including the company's strong foundation in media and advertising, ability to manage unstructured data, disruptive applications and expansion into new verticals.

Ikeda said Veritone's core assets are undervalued and the stock has an attractive risk-reward profile at its current price. In addition, he said future success in Veritone's growth initiatives could generate additional valuation upside and multiple expansions for the stock.

Ikeda said data generation is only going to increase in the coming years, and Veritone is well-positioned to capture additional market share as companies look for AI-driven solutions to manage and analyze that data.

Benzinga's Take: Veritone certainly appears to have tremendous potential to make a big splash in the big data space. However, the company needs to demonstrate it can transition from investment mode to profit mode at some point in the future.

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