Mullen Group Stock Up 65% This Year|Four Analysts Call It Still Cheap, One Says Hold

The Price-Target Wave

Mullen Group shares have climbed roughly 65 percent so far this year, against an 11 percent gain for the broader TSX. Today, four separate research desks pushed their price targets even higher, right after the stock touched a fresh yearly high.

National Bank's Cameron Doerksen raised his target to C$31 from C$23. TD Cowen's Tim James moved to C$32 from C$24, calling the valuation discount to peers unjustified. Desjardins went to C$30, BMO to C$32. All four reiterated buy or outperform ratings on the same trading day.

What changed their read was not just the earnings beat. Management's own language shifted from waiting for projects to actively preparing capital and equipment for anticipated project awards, tied to pipeline, mining, and data-centre buildout activity across Western Canada. TD Cowen flagged that shift explicitly as the reason for its upgrade.

Cheap By Peers, Expensive By History

Here is the paradox four analysts are pricing in at once. On Doerksen's updated estimates, Mullen trades at 8.3 times enterprise value to EBITDA. That is above its own five-year forward average of 6.9 times.

But against the weighted average US trucking peer group, currently near 11.6 times on 2027 forecasts, Mullen still looks cheap. TD Cowen's James put it directly: the business quality doesn't justify the discount to comps. That is the case for continuing to buy a stock already up 65 percent.

But notice what that comparison assumes. It assumes Mullen's multiple should converge toward its larger US peers, not revert toward its own five-year history. The stock's own trading range has already expanded ahead of the project awards management says it is only now preparing for. The peer comparison justifies today's price. The history does not.

Doerksen's model still supports the higher range: he forecasts 2027 free cash flow of 187 million dollars, a 7.4 percent free cash flow yield at today's price. That figure is what the bull case is actually resting on, not the headline share-price gain.

The Holdout and the Trigger

Not every desk has moved. Scotiabank's Konark Gupta has kept a Hold rating on Mullen Group, with a target near C$21, a figure the stock has already traded well past. He covers the same industrial sector, including Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City, giving him a direct comparison set the bulls are implicitly rejecting.

Both sides are reading the same Q2 report and the same capital-budget increase. One side treats the shift from waiting to preparing as confirmation projects are coming. The other has not yet moved off a target the stock has already exceeded. The gap between them is the actual open question, not a hypothetical one.

For a current holder, the trigger to watch is whether that prepared capital converts into named, signed project awards in Western Canada infrastructure, pipeline, and data-centre work. If it does, the higher multiple holds and the bull case extends. If the next quarters show equipment still idle and no contract wins, the valuation gap reverts toward Scotiabank's read, and the multiple compresses back toward its own five-year average. For someone watching from outside the stock, that same contract-award data is the entry signal to track before paying a price already built on preparation rather than delivery.