(More content from the study added)

FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX Broker) - The slide of the Zalando share continued on Wednesday with a record low. The share price fell below the 17-euro mark for the first time since the IPO in 2014. In the early afternoon, the stock was trading at 16.44 euros, down 4.4 percent on the previous day's Xetra closing price.

Analyst Geoffroy de Mendez from Bank of America (Bofa) withdrew his buy recommendation for the online fashion retailer's shares on Wednesday after around one year. However, with a target price of 21 euros, he still sees some recovery potential after the share's slide in recent months.

The expert justified the downgrade in his study with the fear that the long-term growth profile has deteriorated due to increasing competition from brand websites or the Chinese retailers Shein and Temu. He believes that double-digit growth is no longer achievable. Meanwhile, the expert anticipates general challenges in fashion retail in 2024 and has therefore downgraded a total of five sector stocks.

In 2024, Zalando shares are once again the worst DAX stock with a discount of 23.5 percent so far. Last year, they already held the red lantern in the leading index with an annual loss of 35%. Since the record high in 2021, when the online sector experienced a boom thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the share has already lost 84% of its value. At that time, the share price peaked at more than 100 euros.

Zalando went public in 2014. The issue price at the time was 21.50 euros. Early shareholders have since lost more than a fifth of their value./tih/mis/ajx/mis