Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Beam, Halliburton, Nokia, Lululemon and More

Investing

Published: September 4, 2013 8:40 am

Last Updated: September 4, 2013 8:44 am

Each morning 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens and dozens of Wall Street analyst research reports looking for fresh ideas for investors and traders. Some are stocks to buy and others are stocks to sell. These are this Wednesday’s top Wall Street analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations.

Accretive Health Inc. (NYSE: AH) was downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Credit Suisse.

Beam Inc. (NYSE: BEAM) was downgraded to Hold from Buy based on valuation at Argus.

Covidien Ltd. (NYSE: COV) was started as Buy at Needham & Co.

Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL) was reinstated as Outperform and added to the U.S. Focus List with a new price target of $58 (versus $48.30 now) at Credit Suisse, and it was reiterated as Buy and the price target was raised to $63 from $58 by Sterne Agee.

J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP) was reinstated as a Neutral by Goldman Sachs.

Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ: LULU) was reiterated as Neutral and noted cautiously with lowered earnings estimates by Sterne Agee until the new CEO situation and board room uncertainty is resolved.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) was downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Morgan Stanley based on the Nokia deal.

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) was raised to Market Perform from Underperform at Raymond James, raised to Neutral from Underperform at BNP Paribas, downgraded to Hold from Buy at Argus and was upgraded to Hold at Jefferies.

Ryanair Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: RYAAY) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) was reiterated as Buy and on the Focus List with a $59 price target at Argus, and it was raised to Outperform at RW Baird.

Stern Agee reports that there is potential for a minor DRAM-NAND disruption in Hynix Quxi supply, which would be a positive for both SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) and Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU). The report is based mostly on unconfirmed news of smoke at the Hynix’s Wuxi China fab.

UBS sees these top biotechs outperforming for the rest of 2013.

Oppenheimer has reinstated coverage on high-yield MLPs for dividend lovers.

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