FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Hellofresh, one of the weakest MDax stocks for months, started a recovery attempt on Tuesday. The shares of the cooking box supplier rose by 7.8 percent to 12.31 euros. The renowned US bank Morgan Stanley had previously upgraded them to "overweight". Analyst Luke Holbrook argued that the market is overlooking the potential of the Factor ready meals brand.

In 2023, the HelloFresh share price was the second-weakest MDax stock, down a good 30 percent. Anyone hoping for an improvement in the new year has been sorely disappointed so far, as the new year also saw another peak drop of almost 21%. The recovery on Tuesday reduced the annual loss to around 14 percent.

According to Morgan Stanley analyst Holbrook, the share price performance of recent years and months shows that investors are taking too one-sided a view of the share. The Factor division, with its impressive growth momentum, is undervalued, while the focus is too much on the weakening core business with cooking boxes. Factor alone now justifies the company's full market valuation, the expert argued.

HelloFresh was celebrated on the stock market in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic for its cooking boxes, while restaurants remained closed at times during the lockdown or people avoided contact in public spaces. Since the record high in November 2021, however, HelloFresh shares have lost up to 88% of their value - at a time when the pandemic then played less and less of a role.

Other shares from the online sector, which investors have been avoiding for some time, also recovered on Tuesday: shares in online fashion retailer Zalando, the biggest DAX loser so far in 2024, rose by 2.6%.

In the MDax, shares in Delivery Hero rose by 3.3 percent. The shares of the food delivery service have also continued their pronounced weakness from the previous year so far in 2024./tih/edh/mis