24/7 Wall St. Top 10 Analyst Calls of the Week (ACTV, AAPL, EL, GERN, GOOG, NFLX, SZYM, TLAB, WNR, YUM)

24/7 Wall St. usually covers ten to fifteen analyst calls each morning that are having an impact on shares.  After going through these research calls at the end of the week (and during the week), there are always some key analyst calls which standout above and beyond the others.  What is interesting is that some calls end up being rather awful while others offer keen insight.  This week’s top analyst calls were in shares of The Active Network, Inc. (NYSE: ACTV), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL), Geron Corporation (NASDAQ: GERN), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), Solazyme, Inc. (NASDAQ: SZYM), Tellabs, Inc. (NASDAQ: TLAB), Western Refining Inc. (NYSE: WNR), and Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM).

We included the research summaries, included price action data, and added in color if applicable.  At the end we also have three macro-calls which are bonus calls that are not really equity calls but which need to be considered by investors.

The Active Network, Inc. (NYSE: ACTV) is a strange company and one which we figured would be given ratings like Neutral, Hold, Market Perform, and the like as it is an online community that offers application services technology and marketing access to community service and sports organizations.  It has a $1 billion market cap as well. Shares closed at $18.89 on Friday, up from $18.01 the week before and versus a $15.00 IPO price which has never been breached.  Still, the analyst community was entirely positive as the post-IPO quiet period came to an end:

• Citigroup- Buy
• RBC- Outperform
• Stifel Nicolaus- Buy
• ThinkEquity- Buy

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) may not seem like much on the surface because it was a reiterated Buy and the target was raised only $15 to $500 for the stock, but this call from Canaccord Genuity did actually move the meter.  Apple shares closed up 0.7% at $359.71 on a day that the NASDAQ closed down 0.45%.  What is amazing is that this was actually the highest closing price since the $360.00 close on March 4 and it was about ten days ahead of the earnings report.

Estee Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) is being dubbed “The Misnomer Call of the Week” after Credit Suisse started coverage with a “Neutral” rating and gave a $95.00 price target objective.  By our take, Neutral implies no direction or no real value for the stock to move either way.  What makes this one dubious is that the price was already just above $105 going into the call.  This was really a “Stealth Sell Rating” by our take.  The Thomson Reuters consensus price target is $105.29 now, which implies that the rest of the analysts on average are “Neutral.”

Geron Corporation (NASDAQ: GERN) was given a key analyst call and shares were up almost 10% at $4.39 on Friday.  J.P.Morgan started coverage with an “Overweight” rating for the stem cell leader and assigned a $6.00 price target. The call was timed almost perfectly as all stem cell shares rallied on reports that Swedish doctors were able to use stem cells to replace the trachea of a patient suffering from advanced cancer.  Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, but the call had to impact the overall group as well.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) took a downgrade on Friday from Morgan Stanley, where the rating was cut to Equal-Weight from Overweight and the target was cut to $600 from $645 in the call.  With this being 4 trading days before earnings, we could not help but notice the impact.  Google was started with a Buy rating at Collins Stewart earlier in the week and it was given that street-high $800 target from Canaccord Genuity just the week before.

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) saw a major jump after the entertainment research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch reiterated its Buy rating.  What mattered was that it was a street-high price target objective at $325.00 as the bogey.  We already opined that calling a top or predicting when this major run ends is nearly impossible, but we would caution one thing: that is only 10% left in implied upside to the highest analyst target.  After the run this one has seen, its earnings or another event could easily take out 10% of the share price.

Solazyme, Inc. (NASDAQ: SZYM) enjoyed a positive week as its quiet period after the IPO came to an end.  Shares closed at $25.35 for the week and the prior Friday closing price was $23.71.  It was not just one call that ran shares, it was all of the analyst initiations:

• Goldman Sachs- Buy
• Lazard- Buy
• Morgan Stanley- Overweight
• Pacific Crest- Outperform
• Raymond James- Outperform

Tellabs, Inc. (NASDAQ: TLAB) has already been struggling as shares closed at $4.45 for the week against a 52-week trading range of $3.98 to $8.19.  Zacks downgraded this one on Thursday to an “Underperform” rating and gave it the dubious Bear of the Day call.  Tellabs just cannot seem to catch a break.  It is not cheap at all from any views on earnings, but it does at least trade close enough to tangible book value that there may be some implied support ahead.

Western Refining Inc. (NYSE: WNR) has been an incredible turnaround and was given a very positive research call from Zacks as a #1 Strong Buy as a top value pick.  Shares responded well with a 5.4% gain on Friday.  Zacks calls do not often move shares immediately.  What is so interesting about this call is that shares were around $19.55 on the call level and they opened down at $18.96 with the broad market sell-off after unemployment.  The Thomson Reuters consensus is $20.50 and the 52-week range is $4.01 to $20.67.  Imagine a huge gain like that and a stock already close to the consensus price target still offering value.  Zacks noted that it trades at just 6.5-times earnings expectations.  Elsewhere, Zacks called it cheap by every metric it is uses to screen value stocks.

Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM) is set to report earnings this coming week as a top earnings trend that may shape earnings season.  Goldman Sachs downgraded the rating to the notorious “Sell” rating, from an already cautious “Neutral” rating.  Goldman’s restaurant team sees risks to Chinese same-store sales where it dominates and sees margin risks.  This only took out about 1% from the shares and Yum closed out the week at $55.61 versus a 52-week range of $39.42 to $57.04.

Other key broad impact calls from this week….

Janney Capital gave a big list of its BEST IDEAS which is stock picks that it sees performing well throughout the year and into 2012 in many cases.  This list did significantly outperform the S&P 500 Index so far in 2011 and there were many new picks on the list as well.

S&P removed the negative rating outlook on the state of California after the state’s budget was adopted.  This is still the lowest S&P rating for any state at “A-” but this may give municipal bond investors more ammo to look for deals in the California bond funds as many have tax-free yields of 7%.  We gave a full rather large list of these funds when we covered it.

The bond spread woes are spreading to the peripheral nations in Europe, moving from Greece to Spain, Portugal, and Italy.  Ireland is also not immune at all, and we covered this after the Portugal debt rating downgrade that got the new wave of selling started.  Please note that some of the credit default swap spreads, the cost of insuring bonds against default, hit record levels in some of these nations at the end of the week.

Moody’s even tried to cover the financial outlook of the key Chinese banks.  Let’s hope they do better than they did in CDOs and the U.S. banks before the implosion.

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JON C. OGG