William Blair analyst Arjun Bhatia initiated coverage of LivePerson with an Outperform rating. The company's re-architected LiveEngage platform, launched in 2016, enables communication between customers and businesses at scale via messaging channels like SMS, Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and others, Bhatia tells investors in a research note. With annual call center spend of roughly $1.3 trillion, the analyst sees a "massive market opportunity" for LiveEngage as customer service budgets shift to messaging. Bhatia believes LivePerson can accelerate growth to 20% over the next few quarters and sustain that growth profile longer term while also driving margin expansion.

Loop Capital lowered the firm's price target on LivePerson to $1 from $3 and keeps a Hold rating on the shares ahead of its Q1 results. The stock's current "fire sale" valuation multiple of 1-times sales is "quite inexpensive", but turnarounds always take much longer than management and investors expect, the analyst tells investors in a research note.