Potbelly price target raised to $17 from $16 at Benchmark

Benchmark analyst Todd Brooks raised the firm’s price target on Potbelly (PBPB) to $17 from $16 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares after hosting Potbelly CEO Bob Wright and CFO Steve Cirulis for a series of meetings with clients. The firm came away from these meetings “increasingly convinced” that the brand is reaching an inflection point in systemwide unit growth and believes that current trends, driven by recent “needle-moving new product introductions,” support taking its Q2 same-store sales growth assumption to the high-end of the 1.5%-2.5% guidance range for the quarter, the analyst tells investors.