This last week may have moved to a light volume trading week, but the reality is that many investors continued buying the dips. This trend has been in place for over four years now, without a 10% formal stock market correction. 24/7 Wall St. tracks dozens of analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations each day of the week. Some of these calls cover stocks to buy, and the typical upside for “Buy” and “Outperform” ratings generally come with 8% to 15% upside for Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 stocks.
What is always amazing out of these Buy and Outperform ratings is that some analysts maintain much more upside than you usually would expect. Some call for upside of 35%, 50%, or even over 100% in some extreme cases. This last week was no exception. 24/7 Wall St. noticed several calls in that 50% to 100% (one even much more) implied upside category.
Before investors get too excited about huge upside in an analyst call, there are many things to consider for caveats. They generally assume a positive or at least flat market. Analysts often make silly mistakes in their assumptions. Analysts generally have no better information than sophisticated and institutional investors. And sometimes what was expected just turns out to have been incredibly wrong.
There is also a huge degree of risk in most analyst picks with upside of 50% and higher. The calls are rare, and in some cases these businesses are new or are so volatile that they could have total business risk ahead. Many of these analyst calls were also in the speculative biotech and battered energy sectors. With those caveats in mind, here are the analyst calls tracked by 24/7 Wall St. this last week where the implied upside was nearly 50% to 100%.
Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA) was maintained as Buy at Stifel on Tuesday, but the firm’s price target was cut to $14.00 from $15.00 (versus a $9.32 prior close). This call left right at 50% when it was made, but Alcoa closed up at $10.12 last Thursday. That means that Alcoa’s 50% upside is there only on pullbacks (assuming Stifel is correct). Alcoa has a consensus analyst price target of $11.38, and Stifel’s target of $14.00 is now tied for the official highest analyst target price.
Alcoa has a 52-week trading range of $7.81 to $17.10. Imagine finding an analyst bullish on metals these days.
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Nabors Industries Ltd. (NYSE: NBR) was raised to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse last Monday, and the firm’s price target was raised to $12.00 from $9.00. This was versus a $7.87 prior close, which was more than 50% upside at the time. The problem here is that Nabors closed at $8.87 on Thursday, so the new implied upside would be closer to 35% unless the stock pulls back further again.
The consensus price target for Nabors is $12.78, above the $12.65 consensus when the call was first made; and its 52-week range is $7.84 to $16.99.
QEP Resources Inc. (NYSE: QEP) is another one that rose after its call, but it was started as Buy with a price target of $20 at Cantor Fitzgerald mid-week. This oil exploration and production outfit was offering an implied upside of 60% from the prior $12.48 close if the call was right, but the close of $13.38 on Thursday was leaving an implied upside of 49.5% and another 0.6% from the dividend.
QEP has a consensus analyst target of $20.53, a 52-week range of $11.03 to $24.04, and it has a $2.36 billion market cap.
Oncothyreon Inc. (NASDAQ: ONTY) was started as Buy with a $4.00 price target at Jefferies on Wednesday. The prior close was $2.37, and Friday’s closing price was $2.45. That still leaves some 63% in implied upside here for this cancer-focused biotech outfit, but the market cap is less than $250 million.
Oncothyreon has a consensus analyst price target of $4.25 and a 52-week range of $1.41 to $4.69. If you want proof that some companies never mature into big companies, Oncothyreon has been public for almost 25 years and it still has no revenues to speak of.
Other key analyst calls in this 50% to 100% category from this last week were seen as follows:
Adaptimmune Therapeutics PLC (NASDAQ: ADAP) was started as Buy with a $16 price target at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey on Wednesday.
Adaptimmune’s prior close was $10.06, leaving closer to 60% in implied upside; but its $11.00 close on Thursday left an implied upside of closer to 45%. This cancer focused outfit has a market cap of less than $800 million.
Biota Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: BOTA) was started as Outperform and was assigned a $6 price target by FBR Capital Markets early last week. What stands out here is that FBR is the only known firm covering it, so that 200% implied upside from the $1.94 closing price on Thursday may (and should) come with some skepticism by investors.
Biota’s 52-week range is $1.70 to $3.00 and its market cap is a micro-cap level of $75 million. It seems hard to imagine that Biota has been public almost 25 years.
ALSO READ: 14 Top Strategists Offer S&P 500 Targets for 2016
BioTime Inc. (NASDAQ: BTX) was started as Outperform with a $10.00 price target at Oppenheimer early in the week. This was versus a prior $4.15 close, and BioTime closed out the week at $4.33. That still leaves more than an implied 100% upside if Oppenheimer is correct. The firm called it one of a kind in regenerative medicine.
BioTime has only this one analyst call on it, and the $410 million outfit has a 52-week range of $2.20 to $5.95.
Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: KPTI) was started as Buy with a $20 price target at Canaccord Genuity. Its prior close was $13.56, and shares went out at $13.96 at the close of the week for a market cap of almost $500 million. The firm likes that Karypharm is aggressively developing wholly owned drug candidate Selinexor across multiple tumor types and different stages of disease. Before getting too excited about this implied upside, the company was also called to have a transformational 12 to 18 months.
Karyopharm has a consensus analyst target north of $30 and a 52-week range of $10.00 to $39.26.
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Again, you should be able to identify that all of these analyst calls are far more aggressive than you might see elsewhere in most Dow and S&P 500 stocks. After looking through this list, almost all of these companies are currently too aggressive and risky for all investors except for those with the highest risk-tolerance.
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