Home Depot upgrade, Snap downgrade and Walmart coverage initiation among today's top calls on Wall Street Institutional investors and professional traders rely on The Fly to learn which companies the best analysts on Wall Street are saying to buy and sell.
Research analysts at Wall Street's largest banks issue recommendations on whether a stock should be bought, held, or sold. The Fly's team of financial market experts scours hundreds of research notes daily to uncover the best trading ideas. Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
Top 5 Upgrades:
- Truist analyst Scot Ciccarelli upgraded Home Depot (HD) to Buy from Hold with a price target of $448, up from $420, after assuming coverage of the name. The analyst is positive on key industry drivers including supply/demand imbalances in the housing market, pandemic-driven behavioral changes and aging housing infrastructure driving significant incremental home improvement growth.
- Monness Crespi analyst Brian White upgraded VMware (VMW) to Buy from Neutral with a $153 price target. The analyst noted that the stock "has been treading water since the end 2017," not adjusting for the special cash dividend in November, but he now believes the market will begin paying more attention to VMware's "unique value proposition in the cloud" and its attractive valuation.
- Susquehanna analyst Christopher Stathoulopoulos upgraded United Airlines (UAL) to Positive from Neutral with a price target of $60, up from $50. Stathoulopoulos assumes a fuller unlocking of high-margin business and long-haul international travel into the second half of 2022, which should drive meaningful progress in the company's "United Next" plan and ultimately help support margin recovery and expansion into 2023 and later.
- Goldman Sachs analyst Alexandra Steiger upgraded Match Group (MTCH) to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $157, down from $162 after assuming coverage of the name. The analyst believes the company is well positioned to benefit from a number of structural industry tailwinds in the years ahead as the online dating landscape remains underpenetrated. Piper Sandler analyst Matthew Farrell also initiated coverage of Match Group with an Overweight rating and $160 price target.
- Guggenheim analyst Joseph Osha upgraded SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG) to Buy from Neutral with a $329 price target. The analyst thinks that SolarEdge's residential business can "propel the stock higher from here," especially if the company gets its storage offerings on track in 2022.
Top 5 Downgrades:
- Cowen analyst John Blackledge downgraded Snap (SNAP) to Market Perform from Outperform with a price target of $45, down from $75. The analyst has near-term concerns around Apple's (AAPL) iOS 14.5 changes impacting Snap's measurement, targeting and attribution for direct response ad units.
- Edward Jones analyst Logan Purk downgraded Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to Hold from Buy and removing the stock from the firm's Stock Focus List and Canadian Stock Focus List.
- Susquehanna analyst Christopher Stathoulopoulos downgraded Southwest (LUV) to Neutral from Positive with a price target of $50, down from $52. The analyst sees a slower return to profitability for the low-cost carrier as believes cost pressures from investments and its entrance into new markets will offset the benefit from various revenue initiatives.
- Guggenheim analyst Yatin Suneja downgraded Biogen (BIIB) to Neutral from Buy with a price target of $202, down from $290, after CMS released a draft memo outlining a proposed framework for covering Aduhelm.
- Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Lapides downgraded Dominion (D) to Sell from Neutral with a $72 price target. The analyst said the downgrade is largely a relative valuation call, though in the next 1-3 years he also sees potential risks emerging, albeit ones with timelines that remain hard to predict.
Top 5 Coverage Initiations:
- Truist analyst Scot Ciccarelli initiated coverage of Walmart (WMT) with a Hold rating and $153 price target. The company has solid sales momentum and has materially improved its competitive positioning with higher margin businesses, but inflation may adversely impact some its core customer base, the analyst argued.
- Truist analyst Scot Ciccarelli initiated coverage of Target (TGT) with a Buy rating and $270 price target. The analyst believes Target has made substantial improvements to its stores, merchandise quality, and omni-channel capabilities over the last several years, which he thinks enabled it to capitalized on the pandemic-related surge in demand.
- Truist analyst Scot Ciccarelli initiated coverage of AutoZone (AZN) with a Buy rating and $2,329 price target. The recent industry drivers that include greater personal vehicle usage, suburban/rural migration, and elevated vehicle prices will continue well into the foreseeable future, the analyst contended.
- Truist analyst Scot Ciccarelli initiated coverage of Costco (COST) with a Buy rating and $606 price target. Due to its size and purchasing concentration, Costco has "nearly unrivaled" buying power, the analyst argued.
- Piper Sandler analyst Matthew Farrell initiated coverage of Bumble (BMBL) with a Neutral rating and $35 price target. While the analyst thinks Bumble's women-first approach is valuable, and that its culture and brand is a "unique differentiator in the market," he needs to see further execution before becoming more positive. Goldman Sachs analyst Alexandra Steiger also assumed coverage and upgraded Bumble to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $54, down from $57,
Symbols:
HD VMW UAL MTCH SEDG - $273.97 /
+12.77 (+4.89%)
SNAP AAPL ATVI LUV BIIB - $235.65 /
+10.33 (+4.58%)
D WMT - $143.32 /
-0.145 (-0.10%)
TGT AZN COST BMBL Keywords: analyst, analyst calls, upgrades, downgrades, initiations, research, wall street