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Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Amazon, CenturyLink, Fitbit, Mobileye, Eli Lilly, Netflix, AT&T and More

Stocks were indicated higher on Thursday. With markets close to all-time highs, the one trend seen for nearly four years now is that investors have bought every single stock market pullback. 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst and brokerage research reports each morning to find new trading and investing ideas for its readers. Some of these analyst calls cover stocks to buy, and others are about stocks to sell or to avoid.

These are this Thursday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Evercore ISI. Price target data was not seen, but Amazon has a consensus price target of about $468 (versus about $440 now) and a 52-week trading range of $284.00 to $452.65.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) was raised to Buy from Neutral and the price objective was raised to $40 from $35 in the call. This is after multiple analysts also upgraded the stock ahead of the DirecTV merger. The firm talked up a more stable wireless carrier climate and sees merger benefits supporting the stock and the dividend. AT&T now has a consensus analyst price target of $35.17 and a 52-week range of $32.07 to $37.48. AT&T closed at $35.78.

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CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) was downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JPMorgan. The firm also lowered the price target down to $35 from $42 in the call, after a $31.88 close. CenturyLink has consensus analyst price target of $37.00 and a 52-week range of $31.51 to $45.67.

Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE: LLY) was raised to Buy from Neutral and the price objective was raised to $101.00 from $74.00 (versus a $82.26 close) at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Suddenly, the drug pipeline is now better than the patent cliff at Big Pharma. Eli Lily has an analyst consensus price target of $81.39 and a 52-week range of $60.14 to $87.24.

Fitbit Inc. (NYSE: FIT) was started as Outperform at Leerink. Fitbit was also assigned a $44 price target based on having a leadership position in wearable devices. Fitbit still does not have its full analyst coverage yet due to a quiet period after its IPO. The stock closed at $36.01 and has a post-IPO trading range of $29.50 to $40.45.

Mobileye N.V. (NYSE: MBLY) was started as Buy and was assigned a $67.00 price target (versus a $53.04 close) at CLSA. Mobileye has a consensus analyst price target of $58.90, and it has a 52-week range of $31.11 to $60.28.

Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) was downgraded to Sell from Buy and it now has a $585 price target at Societe Generale. This is after the stock split was finally announced and as the company may be sensitive to investor perception changes ahead after effectively doubling this year. Citigroup also downgraded Netflix to Neutral from Buy.

ALSO READ: 4 Stocks to Buy With Potentially Big Upcoming Catalysts

In case you missed out on Wednesday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades, they were in shares of Avago Technologies, Citigroup, Electronic Arts, Ford, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Applied Materials and over a dozen more companies.

 

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