Finance
Trustpilot surges on Morgan Stanley upgrade despite short seller claims
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on December 8, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on December 8, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
Trustpilot shares surged 16% after a Morgan Stanley upgrade, despite allegations from Grizzly Research. The company denies the claims, emphasizing its growth potential.
Dec 5 (Reuters) - Trustpilot shares surged 16% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock by two notches to "overweight" on Friday, a day after U.S. short seller Grizzly Research took aim at the global review platform.
"We think the market is underappreciating Trustpilot's multi-year growth and margin story," Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Hyatt said, as he upgraded the stock from "underweight".
Trustpilot shares fell more than 30% on Thursday after Grizzly Research alleged that the platform created unsolicited profiles that gave negative reviews to coerce businesses into paying for subscriptions.
The company denied the claims, saying "(The report) omits key context and publicly available facts, creating a false impression ... of how Trustpilot works".
Trustpilot shares reversed some of Thursday's losses and were up 15.6% at 149.3 pence by 1223 GMT. They have fallen about 51% so far this year.
Hyatt said Trustpilot's share decline reflects a shift toward valuing the firm's operating leverage, rather than concerns of AI disruption or its business model.
Morgan Stanley added that its proprietary human review data is becoming increasingly valuable in an era of agent-driven commerce.
Morgan Stanley, however, cut the price target on the company's stock to 275 pence from 315 pence.
($1 = 0.7495 pounds)
(Reporting by Yamini Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)
Operating leverage is a financial concept that measures the proportion of fixed costs in a company's cost structure, indicating how changes in sales volume can affect profitability.
A price target is an analyst's projection of the future price level of a stock, based on their assessment of the company's performance and market conditions.
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