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Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Cisco, McDonald's and More

This week marked the beginning of the end of earnings season, and stocks challenged all-time highs yet again. Investors and traders are looking for how to position themselves for 2014. Each morning 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of Wall Street research reports, looking for new ideas for our readers. These are this Friday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen from Wall Street research firms.

Barrick Gold Corp (NYSE: ABX) was reinstated with a Neutral rating at Credit Suisse.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) was maintained as Buy but the price target was cut to $27 from $29 after the dismal earnings report. On Thursday we gave an analyst montage showing all the new ratings and lower price targets offered by Wall Street firms. There were several downgrades, but many other firms maintained their Buy or Outperform bias due to valuation, even if they lowered their expectations.

EnerNOC Inc. (NASDAQ: ENOC) was reiterated as Buy but the price target was raised to $30 from $20 at Canaccord Genuity.

Gogo Inc. (NASDAQ: GOGO) was downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley.

Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) was reiterated as Buy and the price target was raised to $110 from $102 at Argus.

Kohl’s Inc. (NYSE: KSS) was downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at BMO Capital Markets.

LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE: LNKD) was started with a Buy rating at Stifel Nicolaus.

McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) was maintained as Buy with a $107 price target (versus a $97.56 close), but the earnings estimates were trimmed at Sterne Agee after its sales figures and store revamp plan was shown.

Millennial Media Inc. (NYSE: MM) was started as Neutral with a $7 price target at Goldman Sachs.

SAP A.G. (NYSE: SAP) was raised to Overweight with a $95 price target at Barclays.

Silgan Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SLGN) was downgraded from Neutral to Underperform at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) was started as Neutral at UBS.

Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP) was started as Buy at Stifel Nicolaus.

 

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