New York, May 21, 2026, 06:05 (EDT)
- Enphase Energy closed up 13.7% at $53.15 on Wednesday, putting it just below last week’s 52-week high.
- Goldman Sachs raised its price target to $57 from $51 and kept a Buy rating on the shares.
- Regular Nasdaq trading had not opened at the dateline time; Nasdaq lists its core U.S. stock session as 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET.
Enphase Energy shares head into Thursday’s session near a 52-week high after a 13.7% jump, as a fresh Goldman Sachs price-target increase gave investors another reason to revisit a stock tied closely to the battered U.S. residential solar market.
The move matters now because Enphase is no longer trading like a quiet recovery name. It closed Wednesday at $53.15, only 1.4% below its May 15 high of $53.89, and volume hit 11.1 million shares, above its 50-day average of 6.9 million.
Goldman Sachs raised its target to $57 from $51 while keeping a Buy rating, The Fly reported via TipRanks. After Wednesday’s close, that target implied about 7% upside, a thinner cushion than earlier in the rally.
The nut of the trade is simple, though not clean. Investors are trying to decide whether the worst of the residential solar downturn has passed, even after Enphase said U.S. first-quarter revenue fell about 23% from the prior quarter because of seasonality and the expiration of Section 25D, a federal residential clean-energy tax credit for homeowners. Sell-through demand, a measure of products moving through channels to end customers, fell 48% from the fourth quarter.
The broader tape helped. The S&P 500 rose 1.1% on Wednesday after three days of declines, while U.S. futures were little changed early Thursday as investors weighed Iran talks and Nvidia’s results.
Peers gave a mixed but supportive read. First Solar was last quoted at $237.86, up 7.3%, while SolarEdge Technologies was last quoted at $56.22, up 3.0%; Enphase’s sharper move stood out because its business is more exposed to residential inverters and batteries. A microinverter converts power from a solar panel into usable grid power at the panel level.
Enphase has also been trying to shift the story toward product upgrades. On Monday it said it expanded PowerMatch technology in North America for IQ Battery systems; the software adjusts battery operation to match a home’s real-time power needs and reduce conversion losses. Aaron Gordon, senior vice president and general manager of systems at Enphase, said the point was that “software can make the hardware better over time.” Enphase Energy
The company’s commercial push is another piece. Enphase opened U.S. pre-orders last week for its GaN-based IQ9S-3P commercial microinverter, saying the product supports high-wattage solar panels up to 770 watts and that production shipments are expected to begin in June. GaN, or gallium nitride, is a semiconductor material used to improve power-conversion efficiency.
Still, Wall Street is not lined up behind the stock. Investing.com listed 31 analysts at Neutral overall, with an average 12-month price target of $40.60, well below Wednesday’s close; it also showed Morgan Stanley at Sell with a $27 target and Barclays at Sell with a $30 target earlier in May.
The risk is that the rally has run ahead of the facts. GLJ Research said this week that recent gains in SolarEdge and Enphase came without a new earnings event, guidance, signed customer or change in the core residential-solar end market, and called the move a positioning-driven trade rather than a fundamental re-rating. If U.S. residential demand stays weak or tax-credit uncertainty keeps buyers on the sidelines, the stock could give back a chunk of the jump.
For now, Enphase has the tape, the Goldman note and a product pipeline at its back. It does not yet have a clear demand inflection. That is the gap investors will be trading when Nasdaq’s regular session opens.
