Opera (NASDAQ:OPRA) stock continues to be one of the year’s biggest stock market winners. Indeed, the Norway-based tech firm is up more than 280% so far this year on a number of interesting developments for the company.
What’s going on with Opera?
Well, for one, the company seems to be benefitting from a change of target audience. Opera, best known for its series of internet browsers, has seen a surge in popularity this year due to a shift in user base.
“They have been performing so well because they are shifting their user base from Indian and African markets to Western Europe and the [U.S.,] where the average value per user is 8-10 times greater,” Lance Vitanza, Senior Analyst at TD Cowen, told Forbes.
Additionally, Opera has benefitted substantially from this year’s artificial intelligence (AI) wave. Indeed, OPRA’s growth sped up notably in May after the company announced a new AI chatbot, Aria, would be integrated into its browsers with help from ChatGPT, one of the major triggers of this year’s AI trend.
What else is behind Opera’s surge this year?
OPRA Stock Continues to Climb on New Dividend Payout, Twitter Bypass
Back in January, Opera announced that it would offer investors a special 80 cent dividend as well as a semiannual 40 cent dividend starting in June. According to Vitanza, this has further enhanced investors’ perception of OPRA stock:
“The dividend does two things, it tells people the company is confident in its future growth runway, and it attracts more income oriented inventors […] At its current price Opera’s yield is roughly 3.5%, which is almost double the average of the S&P 500 at 1.85%.”
Given Opera’s 22% first-quarter sales growth and rapid swing to a $15.5 million profit from a $9.4 million loss just a year prior, clearly the company has some spare cash to gift to investors.
Finally, Opera is also likely benefitting from a patch allowing it to bypass Twitter’s recently enacted post limit. Indeed, on July 1, Elon Musk announced that Twitter would limit the number of posts users are able to view per day as a way to curb “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.”
Just one day later, though, the official OperaGX Twitter account announced a patch:
We just released a patch for Opera GX that fixes the quote retweets and removes the rate limit for all Twitter users. You're welcome. https://t.co/aOx72q6qXI pic.twitter.com/UMV2j21rug
— Opera GX (@operagxofficial) July 2, 2023
The released patch both fixes a quote-retweet viewing error and removes Twitter’s rate limit entirely, much to the joy of many users.
On the date of publication, Shrey Dua did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
