| Hi all, Julie here. This holiday season, Peloton Interactive Inc. really wants to you buy some luxury in-home fitness equipment. In the TV commercial-turned-PR nightmare for the company, an athletic mom famously got one of Peloton's roughly $2,000 stationary bikes as a Christmas gift. But this is also the season of New Year's resolutions. Meaning plenty of people could be expected to pick up a high-end treadmill or a exercise bike for themselves, too. The stakes are high for Peloton as it heads into its first holiday season as a publicly traded company. In November, it issued ambitious revenue targets. The company projected sales of $410 million to $420 million for the quarter ending Dec. 31, up about 60% from the same quarter a year earlier. Peloton also expects that its ranks of paid members will climb from about 563,000 as of the end of September, to as many as 685,000 at the end of December. But Wall Street is divided on whether Peloton is actually headed for a happy New Year. While most analysts who cover the company give it a "buy" or "outperform" rating, short sellers are amassing. Short interest accounts for about 70% of available shares, and some investors are vocally blasting the company. "We think the equity value is currently overstated by 50%+," Hedgeye Risk Management wrote in a note to clients this week, just days after Citron Research gave a target of 85% below Peloton's current price. Citron likened the company to previous fitness fads, saying it has "obvious comparisons to GoPro and Fitbit." Both GoPro Inc. and Fitbit Inc. , whose stocks have taken a beating since their initial public offerings, have also faced particular skepticism from analysts over weak holiday sales in seasons past. Still, some analysts, like Eric Sheridan at UBS Group AG, are increasingly optimistic on Peloton's future. In a note this week, Sheridan wrote that UBS estimates and company statements point to "increasing consumer adoption into the holiday season in the U.S. and strong early momentum in Peloton's newer international markets." He added that the company's estimates for the quarter "may prove conservative." It's possible the commercial didn't scare everyone away after all. —Julie VerHage | 
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