The Top 5 Analyst Calls of the Week, or 6 (IRE, AIB, CELG, CCME, CSCO, GRMN, LUV)

Analyst calls are sometimes great and sometimes not.  Each week we review the major analyst calls for those standout research calls that were above the grain or are outside of the pack.  Some calls are praise, some are critical.  The goal is not to just find bullish calls, but calls which have a longer duration of a single trading session or even a single week.  We identified six standout research calls this week.  There is a two-in-one for The Bank of Ireland (NYSE: IRE) and Allied Irish Banks PLC (NYSE: AIB); and other standout research calls were in shares of Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG), China MediaExpress Holdings (NASDAQ: CCME), Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN). and Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV).

In each call we have given some basic data on the rating and followed up with individual color where applicable.

Banks and Ireland, a two-in-one analyst call…. S&P cut the ratings of six Irish banks this last week.  The Bank of Ireland (NYSE: IRE) was cut to BB+ from BBB+, while Allied Irish Banks PLC (NYSE: AIB) was cut to BB from BBB.  These cuts were about as timely as a Bush-Gore vote recount.  Can you believe that these Irish banks were still investment grade before the cut?  Amazing.

Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG) had a rough day after Zacks.com detailed Celgene as a “Stocks to Sell Now.”  While shares did recover approximately half of the losses, the drop n the day of the research was 6.9% to $49.50.  That was the lowest close going all the back to July and shares were approaching 52-week lows.  The good news is that at least its valuations are getting back to more attractive levels.

China MediaExpress Holdings (NASDAQ: CCME), an advertising operator on inter-city and airport express buses in China, was hit very hard this week. A short selling research piece from Citron Research (think lemons) threw China MediaExpress under the bus, no pun intended.  The report said that the company has misrepresented its financial performance, and that it has overstated its prospects and financial condition to investors.  After the research report hit this week, shares fell a whopping 33% down to $11.09; and then after the company defended itself the shares popped higher by 25% to $13.89 by Friday’s close.  We asked Herb Greenberg of CNBC about the ongoing issues of many of these previously unheard of Chinese companies and his comment was more of a sector call rather than just toward this company.  He said the added risks and reasons to be leery n the sector are “too many stock promoters, too many dubious models, too difficult to research and ownership structures from hell.”

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) might not seem like much here on the surface as the rating was merely a reiteration.  Oppenheimer maintained an “Outperform” rating but it raised the target to $25.00 from $23.00.  Why this matters is that Cisco’s earnings are less than a week away and the implication came from channel checks that business was improving after its hiccup last quarter.  If you saw John Chambers speak on CNBC a week ago in Davos, there is an obvious: Cisco made its quarter rather easily.  If not, “Lucy, you got some splaining to do!”

Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) might sound like a puny upgrade on the surface.  Stifel Nicolaus upgraded shares from ‘Sell’ to ‘Hold’ on Friday.  Garmin is a heavily shorted stock due to the rise of smartphones that it now has some 24,578,815 shares listed in the short interest, about 23 days equivalent of trading volume.  The issue outside of Navi, Apple, and Google competition is that Garmin became a cult stock long ago and now the moves on any news can be very exaggerated.  The upgrade allowed shares to close up 4.1% at $31.94 on Friday, and shares had reached up as high as $32.59 at the peak on Friday.  The 2.46 million shares traded was actually the highest volume back to December 17 and was actually the highest closing price since November 2, 2010.

Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) is supposed to be the golden-child in the airline industry with earnings expected rain or shine.  Higher fuel prices are not as hedged as they once were by Southwest, and that removes some of its competitive advantages.  Argus downgraded the stock this week and that only took a negative trading pattern and made it worse.  The rating went from Buy to “hold” and the rating cut took out 2.5% of the value of the stock.  Still, shares were down over 12% from the peak right after the start of 2011.  Higher fuel costs allowed Argus to cut estimates in 2011 and 2012, and the reliance upon a single-model and expected weather-related losses all were noted as well.  With a 52-week trading range of $$10.42 to $14.32, Southwest shares are now technically weak.

You can join our free daily email distribution list to hear more about analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader and active trader alerts, dividend trends, news on Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

JON C. OGG