Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
BMO UPGRADES CITI TO OUTPERFORM: BMO Capital analyst James Fotheringham upgraded Citigroup (C) to Outperform from Market Perform, leaving his price target unchanged at $92. The analyst said the bank's Q4 earnings and outlook were "just fine," but the stock trades "as if tragedy were nigh" at a two-year forward multiple of 6.3-times earnings relative to the average historical valuation of 9.5-times. Fotheringham further pointed to three potential upside catalysts for Citi: access to more capital as CCAR comes into focus, seasonality of the typically strongest Q1 earnings, and benefits from his expected weakening of the U.S. Dollar. In morning trading, shares of Citigroup were higher by 1.8% to $60.01.
JPMORGAN CUTS PRICE TARGET ON 3M: JPMorgan analyst Stephen Tusa lowered his price target for 3M (MMM) to $158 from $178 and kept an Underweight rating on the shares. The analyst sees a "fundamental disconnect" between investor perception of the company's business quality, and quality of its growth. The latter is what ultimately drives the multiple, which should be lower, Tusa told investors in a research note. Despite 3M's "consistent misses," even with a solid economic backdrop in 2018, the multiple has expanded from recent lows, and expectations for growth remain too high, claims Tusa, who said he remains negative on the shares. The analyst cut his estimates for 2019/2020 below the consensus. Shares of 3M were lower by 1.5% to $189.34 in morning trading.
BTIG UPGRADES RAPID7 TO BUY: BTIG analyst Joel Fishbein upgraded Rapid7 (RPD) to Buy with a price target of $42, saying he has become increasingly more bullish on the company's "growing value proposition". The analyst notes that his customer checks have indicated increased responsiveness to the product rebranding, adding that his perceived "inflection point in multi-product adoption" has made the company's target of over 30% annualized revenue growth through 2020 achievable. Fishbein further cites Rapid7 benefiting from a "steady" market expansion,120% dollar-based renewal rates, and margin growth. In morning trading, shares of Rapid7 were higher by 3.9% to $36.36.
MORGAN STANLEY REJIGGERS SOFTWARE RATINGS: This morning, Morgan Stanley changed its ratings on a number of software stocks. Of those, notable changes included upgrading Akamai (AKAM), Tenable (TENB), and DocSign (DOCU) to Overweight, downgrading VMware (VMW), Oracle (ORCL), Autodesk (ADSK), and Nuance (NUAN) to Equal Weight, and downgrading Zscaler (ZS) to Underweight.
3M
-2.04 (-1.06%)
Citi
+1.31 (+2.22%)
Rapid7
+0.91 (+2.60%)
Akamai
+1.33 (+2.12%)
Tenable Holdings
+1.92 (+8.34%)
DocuSign
+1.08 (+2.50%)