Catch up on today's top five analyst upgrades with this list compiled by The Fly: 1. Oracle (ORCL) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Wedbush with analyst Steve Koenig saying that the company's guidance for "roughly" double digit percentage fiscal 2018 earnings per share growth "looks achievable," while checks indicate that its PaaS and IaaS sales pipeline is strong. 2. Southwest (LUV) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Argus with analyst David Coleman saying shares have further upside. 3. Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) upgraded to Hold from Sell at Wunderlich with analyst Eric Beder saying risk/rewards is balanced and remains cautious on the company's turnaround efforts. 4. CarMax (KMX) upgraded to Outperform from Sector Perform at RBC Capital with analyst Scot Ciccarelli saying that the company's comparable sales continue to beat expectations, and he thinks the company's sales should continue to be boosted by its improved use of Search Engine Optimization and declining used car valuations. 5. Brinker (EAT) upgraded to Market Perform from Underperform at BMO Capital with analyst Andrew Strelzik citing his belief that sector-wide restaurant comps will accelerate over the next several months due to weakening commodity prices. This list is just a portion of The Fly's full analyst coverage. To see The Fly's full Street Research coverage, click here.

Evercore ISI raised the firm's price target on Brinker to $50 from $48 and keeps an In Line rating on the shares. After a weather impaired January and February, the firm had hoped for a mid-quarter acceleration in restaurant industry same-store sales growth, but "trends remained lackluster," the analyst tells investors in a Q1 preview for the group. The firm estimates fast food industry same-store sales growth of 1.5% in Q1 and a casual dining segment same-store sales decline of 1%, noting that it recently lowered top-line forecasts for much of its coverage because of the sluggish trends lately.

Oracle Corporation Japan "announced that it plans to invest more than $8B over the next 10 years to meet the growing demand for cloud computing and AI infrastructure in Japan. The investment will grow Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's footprint across Japan. In addition, to help customers and partners address the digital sovereignty requirements in Japan, Oracle will significantly expand its operations and support engineering teams with Japan-based personnel. Oracle plans to increase local customer support of its public cloud regions in Tokyo and Osaka and its local operations teams for Oracle Alloy and OCI Dedicated Region. This will enable governments and businesses across Japan to continue to move their mission-critical workloads to the Oracle Cloud and embrace sovereign AI solutions."