Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
ELI LILLY CUT TO NEUTRAL AT CITI: Citi analyst Andrew Baum downgraded Eli Lilly (LLY) to Neutral from Buy while raising his price target for the shares to $115 from $96. After 40% of outperformance versus the sector over the last 10 months, the stock is now trading close to estimated net present value, Baum said in a research note. The analyst believes forecasts for Lilly's in-market drugs, pipeline, portfolio restructuring and spending tightening are now increasingly priced into the valuation. Further, he struggles to find "material near term upside from current levels."
NOVAVAX UPGRADED TO OVERWEIGHT AT PIPER: Piper Jaffray analyst Edward Tenthoff upgraded Novavax (NVAX) to Overweight from Neutral and doubled his price target for the shares to $4 from $2. Novavax completed enrollment of 4,636 pregnant women in the Phase III Prepare trial of ResVax with top-line data expected in Q1 of 2019, Tenthoff said in a research note. Positive results could position the company to file with the FDA and European Medicines Agency by Q1 of 2020, added the analyst. Further, Tenthoff pointed out that Novavax completed enrollment of 1,375 healthy adults in the Phase II study of quadrivalent NanoFlu with top-line immunogenicity data also expected in Q1 of 2019. He upgraded the shares ahead of the data readouts.
CELGENE TRADING AT LOWEST P/E in BIOTECH HISTORY: At 6.5 times 2019 estimated earnings, Celgene (CELG) trades at the lowest price-to-earnings multiple in the history of Biotech, Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said. The stock has dropped since the Q3 report partially on some worries around the Juno deal but largely on Street sentiment worsening and lack of clarity on what's the catalyst other than it's cheap, which isn't a catalyst in a bear market, Yee noted. The analyst thinks "this changes as precedent suggests," but he admitted that the "timing is difficult." Celgene is trading at the analyst's "no-pipeline" value of $65 per share. The stock "could be one to recover on an improved biotech tape," said Yee, who kept a Buy rating on Celgene with a $115 price target.
BAIRD SUGGESTS M&A TARGETS FOR GOOGLE: Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said he continues to view Google (GOOGL) as fully capable of addressing the entire public cloud opportunity, but its progress has been a bit slower than he expected, noting that the company is still the number-three player in the cloud platform market. The analyst believes the company should embark on a more aggressive "shopping spree" to improve commercialization and compiled a list of suggestions for compatible and complementary acquisitions that met his criteria to be "game-changing" based on core product/service, enterprise reputations, growth profile, and post-integration potential. The list of Sebastian and Baird software analyst Rob Oliver includes Workday (WDAY), ServiceNow (NOW), Atlassian (TEAM), Salesforce (CRM), Zendesk (ZEN), LogMeIn (LOGM), Tableau (DATA) and Box (BOX), he said in a note titled "Google Should Lead Another Cloud Consolidation Wave." Sebastian maintained an Outperform rating on shares of Google parent Alphabet.
KEYBANC SAYS AMD ADOPTION ACCELERATING: KeyBanc analyst Weston Twigg says his proprietary cloud data analysis of AWS (AMZN), Azure (MSFT), and Google Cloud (GOOG, GOOGL) reveals an acceleration of AMD (AMD) adoption and a moderate expansion of Xilinx (XLNX) compared to his initial publication in September. This update shows AMD in six regions, the continued ramp of Intel (INTC) Skylake and Nvidia (NVDA) chips across regions, and one additional region availability for Xilinx, he notes. The analyst views this as most incrementally positive for AMD, neutral for Intel, in line with expectations for Nvidia, and likely low for Xilinx, which he believes has several more instances in beta.
Eli Lilly
-0.87 (-0.77%)
Novavax
+0.1 (+5.78%)
Bought by BMY
+0.1 (+0.15%)
Alphabet
+16.97 (+1.65%)
Workday
+3.7 (+2.74%)
ServiceNow
+4.81 (+2.99%)
Atlassian
+1.06 (+1.45%)
Salesforce
+2.89 (+2.36%)
Zendesk
+0.27 (+0.51%)
LogMeln
+1.53 (+1.78%)
Tableau
+2.95 (+2.72%)
Box
+0.24 (+1.41%)
Amazon.com
+50.63 (+3.37%)
Microsoft
+2.28 (+2.21%)
AMD
-0.1 (-0.51%)
Xilinx
+1.36 (+1.56%)
Intel
+0.43 (+0.92%)
Nvidia
+3.21 (+2.21%)