Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
ALPHABET DOWNGRADED TO HOLD: Stifel analyst Scott Devitt downgraded Alphabet (GOOG) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $1,600, up from $1,550, following last night's Q2 report from the company. He believes expected improvement in Alphabet's growth is fairly priced in at current levels and views upside from here as limited compared to mega cap tech names such as Amazon (AMZN), Alibaba (BABA) and Facebook (FB), Devitt tells investors.
DEUTSCHE UPS AMAZON TARGET TO $4,000, GOLDMAN GOES TO $4,200: Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley raised the firm's price target on Amazon.com to $4,000 from $3,333 and reiterates a Buy rating on the shares following last night's "blowout quarter." In a post-earnings research note titled "2 Trillion reasons why we like Amazon shares," Walmsley says the quarter highlighted how Amazon "utterly dominates across two of the biggest secular trends of our lifetimes and what can happen to margins when the business is at more steady state scale." The analyst notes his $4,000 price target values Amazon at over $2 trillion.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs analyst Heath Terry raised the firm's price target on Amazon.com to $4,200 from $3,800 and keeps a Conviction Buy rating on the shares, noting that the company topped the high-end of its revenue guidance for a third consecutive quarter and consolidated operating income also came in above consensus. He believes that the long term steepening of Amazon's growth curve, driven by the acceleration of consumers adopting e-commerce and enterprises adopting cloud computing, will likely drive "share price outperformance well beyond the current crisis," Terry tells investors.
Mizuho, JMP Securities, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Benchmark, Baird and Credit Suisse are among the firms that also raised their price targets on the e-commerce giant's shares following its blowout quarter.
TANDEM DIABETES UPGRADED TO BUY: Guggenheim analyst Chris Pasquale upgraded Tandem Diabetes (TNDM) to Buy from Neutral with a $130 price target after the company reported "robust" Control-IQ adoption and better than expected new patient adds as it saw far less COVID-related disruption than he thought it might back in April. While shares have already re-rated, Pasquale does not think the stock has baked in the "growing list of tailwinds" he sees over the next 12-18 months, including a full year with access to UnitedHealth's (UNH) T1D members, international roll outs and his "sense" that integration with Abbot's (ABT) Libre could come by the second half of 2021.
DURECT STARTED WITH AN OUTPERFORM: Oppenheimer analyst Francois Brisebois initiated coverage of Durect (DRRX) with an Outperform rating and $7 price target. He believes the company's DUR-928 "has finally found its home" in the treatment of Alcoholic Hepatitis given what he sees as "robust" Phase 2a efficacy and safety data in that indication. He also notes the company has started a Phase 2 trial of DUR-928 for COVID-19 patients with acute liver or kidney injury.
2U UPGRADED: Credit Suisse analyst Brad Zelnick upgraded 2U (TWOU) to Outperform from Neutral with a $48 price target following the company's Q2 earnings report. Zelnick says the company continues to show signs of solid execution and prudent expense management while benefiting from the secular shift to distance learning. The analyst expects trends including a meaningful uptick in student demand and enrollments will drive accelerating growth in 2H20 and FY21.
2U
+3.88 (+8.84%)
Durect
+0.08 (+4.12%)
Abbott
-0.45 (-0.44%)
UnitedHealth
-2.94 (-0.96%)
TNDM
+
Alibaba
-0.085 (-0.03%)
Ticker changed to META
+17.7 (+7.54%)
Amazon.com
+143.06 (+4.69%)
Alphabet
-64.04 (-4.17%)