Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) received a huge endorsement in the past month or so when it became known that top investor Warren Buffett had taken a big stake in the integrated oil and gas giant. What seemed to be an undervalued stock suddenly became less undervalued, and now we have another key endorsement from Wall Street.
Goldman Sachs has raised Exxon Mobil to Buy from Neutral on Monday. What should stand out even more is that the price target was raised to $109 from $96 in the call.
What the firm likes here is the production turnaround story, as well as some defensive qualities of the stock. The stock was up only 14% or so this year, and that included the Buffett bump. A gain of 14% might sound great in some years, but the DJIA was up more than 20% and the S&P 500 was up about 25% so far in 2013.
The Goldman Sachs call singles out Exxon Mobil with the upgrade for a coming inflection point of production growth versus capital spending. We had previously highlighted that the Exxon Mobil purchase was one of the only important changes made by Buffett. That is now echoed by Goldman Sachs.
Exxon Mobil shares were up 2.95 at $98.05 in mid-day trading on Monday, but we would point out that the stock also hit a 52-week high of $98.88. Thomson Reuters has a consensus price target of only about $96.30.
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