Shares of Duolingo were rising 10% on Monday after the language-learning platform got a duo of buy ratings on Wall Street. Fears of encroachment from generative artificial intelligence are overblown, the analysts agreed.
Ygal Arounian of Citi Research initiated coverage of the stock with a Buy rating and a $400 price target in a research note Monday, arguing that Duolingo has long-term staying power in the education-technology space.
Meanwhile, KeyBanc Capital Markets analysts led by Justin Patterson upgraded Duolingo to Overweight from Sector Weight and set a price target of $460. User engagement is showing no signs of dropping off, the analysts said, and the company has a path to attracting more users.
The potential for AI translation services to eat into Duolingo's market has been part of the discussion around the stock for over a year. But both Citi and KeyBanc think those fears have exaggerated the harms of AI without properly weighing the benefits.
"We expect Duolingo to be a meaningful beneficiary from GenAI which should outweigh competitive risks that may emerge," Arounian wrote, pointing to the launch of its AI-powered Video Call feature in 2024.
Duolingo can withstand the entry of new AI-powered competitors due to its massive scale advantage and its focus on gamification and convenience, which drive strong user engagement, Arounian argued.
Daily active users jumped 40% from a year ago, to 47.7 million, in the second quarter. And the company has various ways to keep its momentum going, Citi noted. In particular, Duolingo is pushing into learning categories like music, chess, and math.
KeyBanc, too, sees multiple levers to drive growth ahead, including product updates and rollouts, viral social marketing, growth in China, and price increases in mature markets.
"As we have seen from our time following Netflix and Spotify, companies that consistently deliver more product value to subscribers tend to experience minimal churn and achieve meaningful margin improvements from pricing," Patterson wrote.
"Given the company's strength in product and marketing, we believe Duolingo can keep growing its audience," he added.