Southwest Airlines is still a good buy despite recent flight cancellations, according to CFRA Research. CFRA analyst Colin Scarola maintains his rating of the stock as a buy. But he lowered his price target to $41 a share from $47, citing damage to the brand after it canceled thousands of flights in recent days amid scheduling challenges. impending due to winter storm last week. Scarola’s new price target implies a 27.4% gain from Wednesday’s close. He said the stock’s price drop this month due to cancellations makes it a smart time to buy. The stock was up nearly 4% in Thursday afternoon trading, but is still down more than 16% this month and is down about 22%. This year. “We think the stock’s roughly 17% drop in December is unrelated to the actual impact of EPS from recent events, providing an attractive buying opportunity,” Scarola said in a note to Business Insider. customers on Thursday. “LUV’s Christmas week failure caused us to significantly cut our Q4 and 2023 revenue estimates, but we don’t anticipate a negative long-term impact.” Scarola cut its earnings per share estimate for the stock for 2022 to $1.20 from $1.86. He also cut his 2024 estimate to $3.71 from $3.90, while increasing his 2023 estimate to $2.74 from $2.38. Southwest attributes its challenges to internal technology platforms, which the company says have been overwhelmed by the volume of schedule changes. That makes it difficult for pilots and other workers, who try to take on new assignments by phone, and travelers who try to find other flights or alternative transportation. But despite the current hit to the brand, Scarola said one thing that helps the stock is the fact that customers tend to not stop using airlines permanently even after bad experiences. That’s because of what he calls the “cargo-like nature” of flight bookings. Because Southwest fares are typically 15% to 20% lower than competitors, he said customers likely won’t choose to pay more to avoid the airline in the future. Raymond James analyst Savanthi Syth said the biggest earnings impact from the storm on airlines will likely be in Southwest, though she still expects the airline to make a ” small profit” in the fourth quarter of this year. -CNBC Leslie Josephs contributed to this story.