[cnxvideo id=”655422″ placement=”ros”]Each day of the week brings multiple analyst calls from Wall Street. Some are upgrades or initiations for stocks to buy, while others are downgrades or covering stocks to sell. It turns out that some analyst calls create large enough of investor interest that the price of the shares immediately moves higher on the positive research calls.
24/7 Wall St. tracks dozens of these analyst calls each day, or hundreds of calls each week. Tuesday’s top analyst calls generated moves in several key stocks. Some of these stocks are better known companies and others are less known. We have included basic data on each call, as well as trading color to show how much the impact has been.
These were not the only analyst calls making an impact on Tuesday, but they did stand out handily when considering that the stock market indexes were down close to 0.3% each.
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Barracuda Networks, Inc. (NYSE: CUDA) was raised to Overweight from Sector Weight at Pacific Crest, and the firm assigned a $30 price target. Investors should keep in mind that the stock was up almost 50% in the last month or so. Shares were last seen up 2.8% at $23.27 after closing at $22.63 the prior day. Several issues were cited: growing its
recurring revenue; strong renewal rates from more focused sales; more effective marketing and sales incentives; and simple but effective IT-security solutions.
Interestingly enough, the 275,000 shares traded right before 1:00 p.m. Eastern time is not very impressive versus a 605,000 daily average. Barracuda’s consensus analyst target price is $20.81.
First Data Corporation (NYSE: FDC) is a large enough company with its $12.3 billion market cap that you might wonder how a boutique firm could drive the stock that much higher. The firm Craig-Hallum started coverage on First Data with a Buy rating, but what stood out here was that the $20.00 price target was versus a consensus analyst price target of $16.05.
First Data shares were up 2.3%at $13.48 around 1:00 p.m. Eastern time, but the 2.5 million shares was only a half-day’s worth of trading volume. This what really stands out here though: the highest analyst price target on Wall Street was $19.00 prior to this call.
Gemphire Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: GEMP) was started as Buy with a $15 price target at Jefferies on Tuesday. This was versus a prior $10.15 close, and shares were up 8.5% at $11.01 after Jefferies noted that Gemcabene is being developed to address the large and evolving global dyslipidemia market.
Other key calls for the post-IPO quiet period expiration : RBC started it as Outperform with a $25 price target; Canaccord Genuity started it as Buy with a $17 price target.
Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: KPTI) was raised to Buy from Hold and the price target was raised to $12 from $9 at Jefferies. This call was versus a prior $7.12 closing price and Karyopharm shares were up almost 27% at $9.03 on Tuesday. Jefferies said its call is based upon its future revenue opportunity in multiple myeloma. The volume of 1.8 million shares before 1:00 p.m. Eastern time was right at ten-times normal volume, but perhaps this move was boosted or amplified by news that it would update the progress on its drug study.
Karyopharm had been given a Buy rating and $15.00 price target by H.C. Wainwright just two-weeks earlier, but that was when shares were closer to $7.00.
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Tuesday’s full top analyst upgrades and downgrades included shares of Apple, BHP Billiton, Broadcom, McDonald’s, Sophiris, Tech Data and about a dozen more companies.
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