[cnxvideo id=”625477″ placement=”ros”]If you have followed the saga of American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) for the past decade, you have probably noticed that it has migrated from an enviable company with a core list of top customers into an organization that had become quite painful for its investors.
After having spent most of 2016 in the proverbial dog house, Amex came screaming back during the post-election rally. Now it may have seen more analyst upgrades than any of the 29 other Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) components since the start of 2017.
Over the past two years, Amex faced serious account losses from the likes of Costco. Still, the 16% share price gain in the fourth quarter alone allowed its shares to generate a return of 8.6% in 2016. Its dividend-adjusted closing price was $74.08 per share on the last trading day of 2016.
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It seems obvious that some of the excitement has to be around rising interest rates allowing Amex to generate higher interest income from card balances that get carried over by its clients. Amex also can earn actual money on its own cash balances as well.
What stood out at the end of 2016 was that the stock’s consensus analyst target price from Thomson Reuters was just $72.88. If that would have held, it implied downside risk of −1.6%. Amex’s 1.7% dividend yield was making for an expected 0.1% total return in 2017, if the pool analysts was correct on average.
With investors having continued to look for opportunities in the financial services sector, Amex was actually the third-best performing Dow stock in the second half of 2016 (outpaced by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan).
The issue that stands out in 2017 is what feels like an endless trail of analyst upgrades. Analysts have raised their ratings to Buy and Outperform, but they also have catapulted their price targets higher by $10 and $20 per share in some cases. These analysts do not even really care that Warren Buffett is the largest holder of American Express, with over 16% of the shares outstanding being held by Berkshire Hathaway.
Before checking out the most recent upgrades, note that Stephens issued a $65 target late in 2016, and RBC’s new target from the first week of 2017 was just $60.
What a difference a couple of weeks can make. Here are the seen Amex analyst upgrades, showing the statistics of the stock on each day as they were then.
On January 17, 2017, JPMorgan raised Amex to Overweight from Neutral. Its target was raised to $90 from $76. After a prior close of $76.62, it had a consensus analyst target price of $77.80 and a 52-week trading range of $50.27 to $78.00.
On January 10, Oppenheimer raised it to Outperform from Perform. Its price target was set at $98, versus a $75.86 prior closing price. The 52-week range was $50.27 to $76.55, and the consensus analyst target was $75.96.
On Monday, January 9, 2017, Merrill Lynch raised its rating on Amex to Buy from Neutral. The firm’s objective was raised to $90 from $78 and compared to a $75.47 prior close. At that time it had a consensus target price of $75.96 and a 52-week range of $50.27 to $76.55. Merrill Lynch had raised its target to $78 from $74 less than a month earlier.
Other key analyst calls have been seen as follows:
- Stifel raised its Amex price target to $80 from $68 on January 13.
- Barclays raised its target to $83 from $63 on January 6.
- Deutsche Bank raised its target to $88 from $66 on January 6.
- On January 5, Compass Point added the stock to its Alpha List with an $87 price target.
American Express shares were up another 0.4% at $76.95 midday Tuesday. The 52-week range is $50.27 to $78.00, and its consensus price target is now up to $78.56. What matters here is that Thomson Reuters showed its consensus analyst target price as $71.63 just 30 days ago and $67.18 some 90 days ago.
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