Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
FOOT LOCKER UPGRADED TO BUY AT PIVOTAL: Pivotal Research analyst Mitch Kummetz upgraded Foot Locker (FL) to Buy from Hold and raised his price target for the shares to $73 from $64. The company on Friday reported much better than expected Q4 results, and its fiscal 2019 same-store-sales and earnings growth outlook was also well above consensus, Kummetz told investors in a research note. The analyst admitted to being wrong when downgrading the shares early last week, saying he underestimated how well the company was positioned in Q4 and overestimated the impact of Q1 headwinds. With the shares "up only" 6% on Friday post the earnings report, Kummetz upgraded Foot Locker back to Buy.
BED BATH & BEYOND CUT TO UNDERWEIGHT AT BARCLAYS: Barclays analyst Matthew McClintock downgraded Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) to Underweight from Equal Weight and lowered his price target for the shares to $13 from $15. The analyst believes there is "limited, if any," visibility into a potential inflection point towards improving traffic trends. Further, he's "less than optimistic" that the company's gross margin can stabilize in the foreseeable future. While Bed Bath has several efficiency opportunities, these are likely not large enough to overcome a continuation of declining sales pressures, McClintock told investors in a research note partially titled "More Holes than Swiss Cheese."
HAWAIIAN HOLDINGS CUT TO SELL AT DEUTSCHE: Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Linenberg downgraded Hawaiian Holdings (HA) to Sell from Hold and lowered his price target for the shares to $27 from $33. This past week, Southwest Airlines (LUV) management publicly stated that they will start flying inter-island almost as soon as they commence service to Hawaii, Linenberg said. While the analyst believed inter-island flights would ultimately be a part of Southwest's service to Hawaii, he had assumed that they would be lower priority than the company's California to Hawaii service and scheduled as either "tag" flights or "round-robin" flights. However, it has been reported that Southwest will schedule its Hawaii aircraft on three-day rotations which include one full-day in Hawaii operating inter-island service, Linenberg pointed out. As a result, Southwest will be able to fully allocate 175 of its seats for the majority of its inter-island flights providing formidable competition against Hawaiian's 128-seat Boeing 717s, he says. To reflect this "more direct competitive threat" to Hawaiian's inter-island business, the analyst downgraded the shares to Sell. He sees further downside risk to his 2019 earnings forecast.
HASBRO UPGRADED TO MARKET PERFORM AT BMO: BMO Capital analyst Gerrick Johnson upgraded Hasbro (HAS) to Market Perform from Underperform and raised his price target for the shares to $88 from $75. The stock's multiple will expand as "major theatrical events" approach later in the year, Johnson told investors in a research note. He believes the shares have now entered the Frozen 2 "hype cycle." The movie releases on November 22, and Hasbro holds the master toy license with toys on shelf on October 4, the analyst pointed out. Further, relief that the Toys "R" US disruption of 2018 is over and a lowering of near-term financial expectations have "cleared the way for investor sentiment to improve," added Johnson. The analyst, however, still sees risk to Hasbro's financials and believes the company could underperform Street expectations for 2019 and 2020.
ALECTOR INITIATED AT MULTIPLE FIRMS: Alector (ALEC) was initiated with an Overweight rating at both Morgan Stanley and Barclays, an Outperform rating at both SVB Leerink and Cowen, and a Buy rating at BofA/Merrill.
Barclays analyst Geoff Meacham started Alector with an Overweight rating and $27 price target. The company's platform and its pipeline are both differentiated in the neuroscience field, Meacham said. He believes Alector's lead program in frontotemporal dementia has a logical mechanism of action, with initial Phase 1 human data showing increases in a target called progranulin; the deficiency of which is a causal factor in the disease. Further, the company's two programs in Alzheimer's disease are high-risk but offer a unique approach versus decades of clinical trial failures, added the analyst.
BofA/Merrill analyst Tazeen Ahmad initiated Alector with a Buy rating and $26 price target, saying its approach to modulate immune response in the brain is highly differentiated versus competitors who focus on targeting single disease-associated proteins, which have not yielded success. Ahmad believes Alector's focus on genetically validated immune targets has potential to slow and reverse degeneration.
Foot Locker
+0.695 (+1.10%)
Bed Bath & Beyond
-0.715 (-4.29%)
Hawaiian Holdings
-2.54 (-8.58%)
Southwest
-0.2 (-0.37%)
Hasbro
+1.43 (+1.62%)
Alector
+1.11 (+5.29%)