Stifel analyst Chris O'Cull upgraded Papa John's International to Buy from Hold and raised his price target for the shares to $60 from $42. The stock closed yesterday up 9.5%, or $4.18, to $48.00. New CEO Rob Lynch's turnaround experience and marketing expertise improves the company's prospects of delivering positive same-restaurant-sales gains over the coming quarters, O'Cull tells investors in a research note. He believes sentiment towards the stock will improve as investors assign a higher probability it can recover a meaningful portion of the roughly $100M EBITDA it has lost since 2017. The analyst now projects domestic Papa John's same-restaurant-sale to increase 5% starting in Q1 of 2020.