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5 Under the Radar Analyst Upgrades That Should Not Be Ignored
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With the investment community proving month in and month out that they will buy stocks on any weakness, investors are looking for value and other less-discovered avenues for growth and profits ahead. 24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning and afternoon to find such value and hidden gems for its readers. With that thought in mind, our daily top analyst upgrades and downgrades report sometimes either misses out on some of the key analyst calls or it did not have enough data on the calls to print early that same morning.
Monday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades included shares of Carrizo, Nike, Oracle, Pure Storage, Regions Financial, Seagate and over a dozen other companies. These are five more analyst upgrades, positive calls, or initiations that were simply too big to ignore this Monday.
General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) has earnings behind it and is set to spin-off the Synchrony stake. It turns out that RBC Capital Markets likes the growth story at GE even better now for a post-financial move towards being valued an industrial conglomerate rather than a half-bank. The firm reiterated its Outperform rating and raised GE’s price target up to $32.00 from $30.00 in the call. GE’s consensus analyst price target is right at $32.00, and the $32.00 price target is actually now just $1.00 shy of the street-high analyst price target. Stifel and Barclays also have reportedly raised their targets to $30 from $32. Oh, and Credit Suisse kept it on the Focus List as well on Monday.
McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) may still be out of favor and under pressure for higher wages. Just don’t bother telling that to management or to shareholders. The stock is now among the better performers in the Dow this year and Credit Suisse’s Investment Policy Committee has decided to add McDonald’s to both the U.S. Focus List and to the Global Focus List. Credit Suisse considers McDonald’s as one of its top investment ideas. The firm’s official rating was maintained as Outperform with a $32.00 price target.
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Digital Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE: DLR) is a high dividend tech stock, although technically it is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). It turns out that investors are getting more and more technology in REITs, and Digital realty was among the first “landlord to the cloud” plays. More companies have entered the space, but it owns many data center operations. Barclays reinstated an Overweight rating and assigned a $75.00 price target. Digital Realty also saw its price target raised to $76 from $74 from Deutsche Bank and saw its target raised to $69 from $67 at Macquarie. The share price is currently $71.30 and it has a yield of about 4.8%.
Itron, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) saw a much larger gain than you might have expected. The metering solutions products company for utilities was raised to Buy from Hold at Canaccord Genuity and its price target was raised to $45.00 from $35.00 (versus a $34.34 prior close). The firm said that Itron is coming back to life and back to visibility after having underperformed the broader market for several years. It sees restructuring efforts adding to core earnings power, end-market and M&A multiple improvement, and a new COO and recent activist investor interest all adding to the flow here.
Kellogg Company (NYSE: K) has not seen much action from the call, but it was one of the few bright spots in a broader food sector call at Buckingham Research. The firm was cautious on most outfit valuations, but it assigned a new Buy rating and gave a $80.00 price target (versus $69.71) and shares actually hit a new year high of $70.17 earlier on the news. Kellogg’s consensus analyst target price was closer to $68.00, and we would point out that this matches the street-high target price.
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