JPMorgan Upgrades BP to Overweight as Shares Extend Rally

JPMorgan upgraded BP (LON: BP.), the London-listed oil and gas major, to Overweight from Neutral on Wednesday, lifting its price target to 675p from 550p.

An Overweight rating means the broker expects the stock to outperform its sector, and the new target sits well above where the shares are currently trading.

BP shares closed Wednesday at 557.2p, up around 2.6% from Tuesday’s close of 542.9p, and extended those gains into Thursday, trading at 569.06p by mid-morning, up 11.86p, or 2.1%, on the day. The London-listed shares were among the session’s stronger movers in early trade.

The move takes BP to the upper end of its recent range. The stock has traded between roughly 527.8p and 580.3p over the past two weeks, and Thursday’s price of 569.06p is close to the top of that band — a marked turnaround from levels below 543p as recently as Tuesday. Thursday’s session has so far seen an intraday high of 569.06p against a low of 559p, on volume of around 3.8 million shares, after opening at 560p.

JPMorgan’s analysts said the combination of favourable macro conditions and BP’s internal changes, which they called micro renewal, gives the company a chance to reduce its exposure to swings in the oil cycle and improve its underlying fundamentals by 2028.

Macro tailwinds and micro renewal present a major opportunity to lower BP’s macro procyclicality and high-grade its fundamentals into 2028.

JPMorgan

Central to the case is BP’s balance sheet. JPMorgan models the company’s deleveraging, or paying down debt relative to its size, inflecting from the second half of 2028, and believes BP’s broader restructuring plans carry a value opportunity.

JPMorgan describes BP as being on a “road to redemption,” underlining that this is a longer-term call rather than a bet on an immediate re-rating, with the bulk of the value case built around BP’s balance sheet trajectory into the end of the decade.