Stocks have become quite choppy going into the end of 2015, and the strength of the bull market’s nearly seven-year tenure is now up for question. Still, despite Wall Street looking for a positive but choppy S&P 500 in 2016, the reality is that investors have bought every single pullback for more than four years now.
24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst reports each day of the week to find new investing and trading ideas for our readers. Some of these analyst reports cover stocks to buy. While most analyst Buy and Outperform ratings come with upside of 8% to 15% for more or S&P 500 stocks, some analysts are far more aggressive. Some of the analysts see upside of 25%, or even all the way up in the 50% to 100% projected upside.
The first thing to consider here is that if analysts see 50% to 100% then they are generally far more aggressive. You almost never see calls like that in Dow stocks, and they are often in companies that are very volatile or that come with some obvious bruises.
In almost all these wild upside stocks, conservative investors should not be involved. It turns out that some analyst calls simply miss the mark, have wrong assumptions or end up wrong due to other outside forces. Wall Street analysts also generally have no better insight about companies and sectors than institutional and sophisticated investors, and those in the “smart money” have found themselves wrong more than just a time or two.
More warnings can be made, but hopefully the major one to take here is that aggressive analyst price targets with close to 50% or up to 100% upside almost automatically means that there is a larger degree of risk. And note that some of these calls are in the battered oil and gas sector and in biotech, so there is generally more risk than normal at this time.
To prove a final point: only two S&P 500 stocks have doubled so far in 2015, and only nine are up 50% or more (including the two that doubled). Some 15 S&P 500 stocks are down more than 50% so far in 2015. Here are 14 analyst stock picks from this past week with roughly 50% to 100% implied upside for the year ahead.
Cypress Semiconductor
On Tuesday, Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: CY) was started as Outperform with a $14.00 price target at Oppenheimer. The stock closed at $9.63 prior to the call and closed at $9.52 on Friday. It has a consensus analyst price target of $13.13 and a 52-week trading range of $8.11 to $16.25. The chip wave consolidation is setting up for a period of key winners and key losers.
Cypress Semiconductor has an implied upside of over 47% to the Oppenheimer target, and that would be more than 50% upside if you include the dividend. Oppenheimer likes the company’s focus on auto and industrial segments now being more than half of its business, while the competitive pressure in mobile chips been removed handily from its revenue mix.
Encana
Jefferies raised Encana Corp. (NYSE: ECA) to Buy from Hold with a $9.50 price target on Tuesday in another aggressive analyst call saying “enough is enough” in the battered oil and natural gas sector. Encana closed down over 8% at $5.54 on Monday, and it got even worse by Friday with a close of $5.02. Its consensus price target has fallen to $9.91 from over $10.00 when the call was made.
Encana’s prior 52-week trading range was $5.43 to $14.73, but that 52-week low is now $4.86. Jefferies said that Encana’s severe relative share price weakness was exacerbated by a surprise dividend cut, but this appears to be prudent, and the stock looks inexpensive at a discount to the firm’s risk-adjusted asset value. This implies 90% upside plus the dividend, assuming that Jefferies did not look at the valuation tables upside-down.
Energy Transfer Equity
Late in the week, Energy Transfer Equity L.P. (NYSE: ETE) was initiated with a Buy rating and was assigned a $23.00 price target at Jefferies. Yes, another bottom-fishing effort in oil and gas infrastructure. This was versus a prior $11.77 close after a 9% drop, but the units of this master limited partnership (MLP) fell another 5.7% to $11.09 on Friday.
Energy Transfer has a consensus price target that has fallen to $33.94 from $35.31 prior to the call, and its 52-week range has now fallen to $10.85 to $35.44. Trusting calls for 100% upside in MLPs just feels like it is getting really old now, but that was their call. See the Williams call below as these are linked.
Pandora Media
Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) had a wild ride around the new government-mandated royalties, but the huge enthusiasm from Thursday was tempered by Friday’s close of $14.12. Pandora was reiterated as Buy with a $24.00 price target at Canaccord Genuity on Thursday.
Pandora’s consensus price target actually rose to $20.55 from $18.76 before the news, and the 52-week trading range is $11.38 to $22.60. Does 70% upside feel right for Pandora’s new mixed business model and very choppy performance history? If you want a balance to this call, FBR Capital Market upgraded the stock to a mere Market Perform from Underperform and it sees $16.00 as a fair value.
Williams Companies
In another attempt to bottom fish in the energy sector, Williams Companies Inc. (NYSE: WMB) was raised to Buy from Hold at Jefferies on Friday. The $43.00 price target was versus a prior close of $23.70, and it looks even more aggressive after a 9% drop to $21.54 on Friday. Williams now has a consensus price target of $44.50 and its 52-week range has fallen to $21.50 to $61.38. This call is deal linked with the implied value of the Energy Transfer deal.
Jefferies derived its $43 Williams Companies price target from the $23 per unit Energy Transfer Equity target price and based on an average of the all-stock and partial stock and cash deal consideration options. Upcoming catalysts are the merger completion, cost synergy realizations, and articulation of 2016/2017 distribution growth strategy.
And the Rest
Other key analyst calls with close to 50% upside and as much as 100% were seen in the following companies this past week.
Amplify Snack Brands Inc. (NYSE: BETR) was started as Buy with an $18.00 price target at Jefferies on Wednesday. The prior close was $11.51, but a 3% drop on Friday and a weak market took shares down to $10.40 on Friday. This was already above 50% in implied upside, and the lower share price would generate roughly 73% upside if Jefferies is correct here. Amplify was said to have an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of at least 15% to 20% on sales and roughly 20% on earnings through 2020. Jefferies also sees the company able to generate $320 million in cumulative free cash flow over the next 5 years.
Chimerix Inc. (NASDAQ: CMRX) was started as Buy with a $55.00 price target at UBS on Thursday. This was versus a prior $35.21 close, and shares went out at $35.91 on Friday. That target implies some 53% upside if UBS is right. Interestingly enough, Chimerix has a higher consensus price target ($61.27), and its 52-week range of $33.02 to $58.04 would imply that this is simply revisiting highs rather than calling for a new breakout.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (NYSE: HPE) was raised to Outperform from Neutral by Credit Suisse on Monday. The firm’s price target was raised to $21.00 from $19.00, implying right around 50% upside to the prior $14.18 close and Friday’s $14.16 close, if you include its dividend yield.
Marinus Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ: MRNS) was started as Outperform with a $14.00 price target at RBC Capital Markets on Thursday. That implied more than 100% from the prior $6.14 close if RBC is proven right, but another 12.5% gain to $7.64 on Friday puts the current implied upside at just under 100%. Marinus has a consensus analyst price target of $16.40 and a 52-week range of $4.52 to $20.72.
Puma Biotechnology Inc. (NASDAQ: PBYI) was raised to Buy from Neutral with a $107 price target at Citigroup on Monday. This compared to a prior $67.94 close and to Friday’s close of $72.97. That leaves almost 47% upside from Friday’s close, or over 50% from when the analyst upgrade took place. Puma Biotech’s consensus analyst target has now fallen sharply to $134.25; it was closer to $190 at the time of the call. Its 52-week range is $56.11 to $252.92, but that 52-week low was on the prior Friday on almost 10-times volume.
Relypsa Inc. (NASDAQ: RLYP) was started as Buy with a $63.00 price target at H.C. Wainwright on Thursday. This was versus a prior $28.31 close, and shares went out at $27.92 on Friday. This still implies more than 100% in upside if the firm is correct in its views. Relypsa has a consensus price target of $45.44 and a 52-week range of $10.26 to $42.26. This stock has been so volatile that anything seems possible, maybe even the buyout rumors that had been floated in prior weeks.
Rubicon Project Inc. (NYSE: RUBI) was started as Buy with a $24.00 price target at Jefferies on Thursday. The prior close was $15.29, and the $15.94 close on Friday still leaves just over 50% implied upside, if Jefferies is correct. This one has a consensus price target of $24.20 and a 52-week range of $13.08 to $20.59. Rubicon is a slowing high-growth story with huge potential upside in the automated real-time online advertising market.
Sangamo BioSciences Inc. (NASDAQ: SGMO) was started as Buy at Janney Capital Markets on Thursday. The firm’s fair value estimate was set at $15.00, which implies more than 50% upside from the prior $9.33 close and Friday’s close of $9.63. The firm said that Sangamo Bio is a leader in genome editing with a long-term perspective. Sangamo has a consensus price target of $18.40 and a 52-week range of $5.30 to $19.25.
WPX Energy Inc. (NYSE: WPX) was started as Buy with a $10.00 price target at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey on Tuesday. The prior close was at$5.84, but WPX closed south with the market on Friday for a 4.5% drop to $5.44. This leaves more than 80% implied upside, if SunTrust’s analysis pans out. WPX even has a consensus price target of $11.11 and a 52-week range of $5.24 to $14.65. Being a speculative natural gas and oil player still comes with a lot of risk.
Again, these 50% to 100% implied upside picks from analysts are generally coming with far more risk than traditional Dow stocks, even if many of these are large cap stocks.
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