Walgreens Boots Alliance upgrade, HP Inc. downgrade, and DraftKings 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:
- JPMorgan analyst Lisa Gill upgraded Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) to Overweight from Neutral with a $42 price target. The company has "significantly invested in its transformational consumer-centric healthcare strategy," the centerpiece of which is the launch of Walgreens Healthcare, Gill tells investors.
- Summit Insights analyst Kinngai Chan upgraded Applied Materials (AMAT) to Buy from Hold post the October quarter results. The analyst now believes the 2023 wafer dab spending cuts are priced into the stock.
- Gordon Haskett analyst Chuck Grom upgraded Ross Stores (ROST) to Buy from Hold with a $130 price target. He had turned incrementally more positive on the off-price retail space last week when he'd upgraded TJX (TJX) to Buy, but the results from Ross and across the space with over 10 companies under coverage reporting Q3 results this week lead him to see more "evidence" that middle-income shoppers would begin to trade down into the off-price space.
- Guggenheim analyst Shahriar Pourreza upgraded Pinnacle West (PNW) to Neutral from Sell with a price target of $70, up from $54. The regulatory construct in Arizona has improved following the election loss of Commissioner Sandra Kennedy and the victories of two Republican commissioners, Pourreza tells investors.
- Northcoast analyst Jim Sanderson upgraded Domino's Pizza (DPZ) to Buy from Neutral with a $460 price target.
Top 5 Downgrades:
- Credit Suisse analyst Shannon Cross downgraded HP Inc. (HPQ) to Neutral from Outperform with an unchanged price target of $33. The analyst believes the company's revenue and margins will be "challenged near term" by weakening consumer sentiment, pressure on selling prices as a result of lower demand and better supply, slower enterprise demand near term for PCs and printing as IT budgets prioritize hybrid cloud, security and software solutions, and macroeconomic uncertainty.
- Oppenheimer analyst Jay Olson downgraded Editas Medicine (EDIT) to Perform from Outperform with a price target of $12, down from $28. The downgrade follows the announcement that the Phase 1/2 BRILLIANCE trial of EDIT-101 for Leber congenital amaurosis 10 is pausing enrollment following preliminary efficacy data that showed only three of the 14 patients met the responder threshold of clinically meaningful improvement in best corrected visual acuity, Olson tells investors in a research note. Credit Suisse analyst Tiago Fauth also downgraded Editas Medicine to Neutral from Outperform with a price target of $13, down from $25, after removing the contribution from EDIT-101 and other ocular indications from his model following the company's update from the BRILLIANCE trial.
- Morgan Stanley analyst Lauren Schenk downgraded Rent The Runway (RENT) to Equal Weight from Overweight with a price target of $2.50, down from $10. Recent web traffic data suggests a "meaningful October slowdown" and a Q3 subscriber miss after an encouraging September, Schenk tells investors in a research note.
- Wedbush analyst Seth Basham downgraded RH (RH) to Neutral from Outperform with a price target of $270, down from $274. RH has been steadfast in protecting its brand without discounting, but this has contributed to mounting market share losses, Basham tells investors in a research note.
- Erste Group analyst Hans Engel downgraded Amazon.com (AMZN) to Hold from Buy. The "outlook for earnings development has deteriorated in recent weeks," Engel tells investors.
Top 5 Initiations:
- Piper Sandler analyst Matt Farrell initiated coverage of DraftKings (DKNG) with an Overweight rating and $21 price target. DraftKings is a leader in the online sports betting market with a growing presence in internet gaming, which combined represent an $80B total addressable market between the United States and Canada, Farrell tells investors in a research note.
- Credit Suisse analyst Trung Huynh initiated coverage of Merck (MRK) with an Outperform rating and $120 price target, calling it one of his two top ideas based on a relative basis among the U.S. large-cap biopharma peer group. He sees Merck having "low-risk and high short-term growth" as he sees Keytruda growing at over 20% year-over-year, giving the company "ample time" to fill its loss-of-exclusivity cliff by end-2028.
- Raymond James analyst Andrew Cooper initiated coverage of Fulgent Genetics (FLGT) with an Outperform rating and $45 price target. The company capitalized on COVID-19 testing capabilities and has now deployed part of its "substantial cash hoard" to emerge from the pandemic with the full breadth of oncology testing capabilities, Cooper tells investors in a research note.
- BofA analyst Jason Zemansky initiated coverage of Insmed (INSM) with a Buy rating and $39 price target. The company's differentiated pipeline and strong underlying fundamentals place it apart from its peers, presenting a "compelling" risk-reward, the analyst tells investors in a research note.
- Morgan Stanley analyst Alex Straton assumed coverage of Ross Stores with an Overweight rating with a price target of $127, up from $119, following the company's Q3 report. The magnitude of the Q3 beat "surprised to the upside" and revenue re-acceleration "makes for a compelling set-up" into Q4 and 2023, said Straton, who thinks "things only get better from here."
Symbols:
HPQ DKNG EDIT RENT MRK RH FLGT WBA AMAT ROST TJX PNW DPZ AMZN INSM Keywords: analyst, analyst calls, upgrades, downgrades, initiations, research, wall street