If you're under 30, you probably think Five Below has always existed… like gravity, Wi-Fi, or streaming seven TV shows at once. For the rest of us, we remember when it first showed up in town and we were like, “Wait, this place sells Squishmallows, Bluetooth speakers and gummy bears for five bucks? What’s the catch?” Well, the catch was that the $5 remote-control car your kid begged for broke before you even backed out of the parking lot. But hey… it was five bucks.

Despite the “ehh” product quality in some aisles, the business itself is clearly on the up and up. And Wall Street is starting to catch on. One analyst, Craig Hallum, basically lit a candle for Five Below, smacked a fresh Buy rating on the stock, and raised his price target from $133 to $152. And he’s not the only one (Jefferies, Citi, Mizuho) they’re all bumping their targets and trying not to look like they just got here.

In its Q1 earnings report, Five Below posted a 7.1% jump in same-store sales… aka comparable sales, for the finance nerds in the back… and pulled in $970.5 million in revenue, up 19.5% from the same quarter last year. For context, that’s super good for a discount chain. EPS came in at $0.86, comfortably above analyst expectations of $0.83. And instead of cooling off, management cranked up the heat with Q2 guidance between $975 million and $995 million, well ahead of Wall Street's projection of $958 million.

Adding to the madness, on thursday morning, Five Below and Uber Eats announced they’re teaming up to bring over 1,500 of the retailer’s stores onto the delivery app. Yes, you can now order slime kits, LED party lights, and Sour Patch Kids without ever putting on pants.

It’s the kind of chaotic, genius-level consumer convenience we didn’t know we needed. And Uber, which has been steadily expanding its “we’ll deliver literally anything” strategy, was up slightly on the news too. If nothing else, it’s a good story… Five Below now gets to meet customers where they are: on their phones.

Of course, not everything is glitter and impulse buys. Five Below is still dancing around some margin issues, largely due to tariffs and higher labor costs. The company has a pretty heavy reliance on Chinese suppliers (shocking, I know), but it’s actively working to diversify its sourcing by 2026. Analysts expect a margin drag of about 150 to 200 basis points this year, thanks to these pressures and increased incentive compensation. 

Despite those challenges, Five Below is still expanding at a breakneck pace. It opened 55 new stores in Q1 across 20 states, with two of them landing in the company’s top 25 grand openings of all time. Customer traffic is up, store execution has improved (thanks to better labor and process investments), and categories like beauty, novelty food, and tech are driving serious volume. They’re also leaning hard into social media and digital marketing (welcome to 2025)… because when you’re trying to get Gen Z and middle schoolers in the door, Instagram hits harder than a TV commercial ever could.

The stock is up 53% in the last month. After being absolutely dumpstered earlier this year (down nearly 50% at one point) Five Below has staged a comeback to the likes of the Indiana Pacers. Tariffs got walked back, guidance got raised, and now the market is suddenly treating Five Below like royalty.

So what’s the takeaway here? Five Below might be worth adding to your portfolio (or at least keep an open mind). The company’s gross margin sits at a healthy 34.9%, and in a tariff-free universe, analysts think it could bring in over $6 per share in earnings. The current P/E ratio of 16.5x might even look cheap if they keep this momentum going. It’s not exactly the sexy, high-growth play money twitter won’t shut up about… but it’s quietly becoming one of the most resilient and surprisingly innovative retailers in the market. Just don’t expect the $5 toy to survive a collision with your kitchen wall. Some things never change.

At the time this article was published Stocks.News holds positions in Uber as mentioned in this article.