7 Huge Analyst Calls That Were Largely Ignored or Overlooked This Week

The week of July 13 was another wild one for the equity markets. Investors are getting to grapple with a nine-year-old bull market that is facing rising gross domestic product in the United States and a “peak earnings” scenario while global growth is slowing. Also front and center is that the Federal Reserve keeps wanting to raise interest rates as the economy reaches full employment, even as trade war and tariff fears keep arising each week.

Many investors are looking for new ideas and outside advice on where to look for opportunities for the second half of 2018. After all, buying the dips just hasn’t been as reliable as it had been in 2017 and the prior few years. It turns out that analysts on Wall Street are still identifying undervalued stock stories where big upside may be made if the expected scenarios come to fruition. Some analyst calls are looking for much larger than normal upside, and the market volatility and the endless flow of major non-equity news is causing some of these calls to be overlooked or missed entirely by the investment community.

24/7 Wall St. reviews hundreds of analyst upgrades and downgrades each week, and a review of the analyst calls from the week of July 13 presented seven analyst picks that were either missed, overlooked or even ignored by investors. This tends to happen frequently during volatile markets, but there was only one day this last week which butted heads with bullish investors.

We have included details about each analyst call that seemed to be overlooked this week, along with trading activity around each call. Also provided in this synopsis are the trading history around each company, the consensus analyst price target from Thomson Reuters, and additional color around each call if available. Sometimes it is these overlooked research calls issued when investors are distracted that can bring the most rewards.

Here are seven stocks with big analyst calls that seemed to be overlooked or ignored by investors during the week of July 13.

BlackRock: ETFs to the Future!

BlackRock Inc. (NYSE: BLK) had a quiet week after rallying Monday and Tuesday with the markets. What stood out was a Friday, July 13, call in which the money management giant and manager of the iShares ETF family shares was raised to Outperform with a $590 price target at Keefe Bruyette & Woods. This represented an implied total return of more than 18% to the target (dividend included), but BlackRock’s stock also was ignored after Credit Suisse’s refreshed Top Picks list included it with a $743 price target that implied just over 50% in total return expectations.

BlackRock has a consensus price target of $608.58 and a 52-week trading range of $408.62 to $594.52. Year to date, the stock was down about 2%.

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CarMax: Big Call, but Peak Auto Fears Rule!

CarMax Inc. (NYSE: KMX) was given what should have sounded like a very positive analyst upgrade—a double-upgrade actually—on July 10 by Morgan Stanley. The firm raised its rating to Overweight from Underweight. Unfortunately for CarMax, this was more or less a standout in a cautious auto dealership call that really felt more like a “peak auto” call as it pointed to being deep into the auto cycle and that it would limit the potential for multiple re-rating for the dealer stocks.

CarMax shares did pay some attention later in the week with a rally on Friday to $77.37, but the stock was lower on the call itself and then again with the mid-week selling in the broader markets. With shares up 1% at $77.40 late on Friday, CarMax has a 52-week trading range of $57.05 to $81.67, and the consensus target price is just above $84, for what is arguably one of the best run dealerships in the country.

Cinemark and AMC: No, Movie Theaters Aren’t Dying

Cinemark Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) have had a hard time finding much love over the past 18 months or so. The two stocks were given solid upside calls but were more or less ignored as they were issued the day of the big sell-off (July 11). With a solid summer late of movies and hopes for a better post-summer movie lineup from the industry, this call implied upside of about 25% in the stock.

Cinemark was started with an Outperform rating and assigned a $46 price target at Imperial Capital. This compared with a prior $36.73 closing price, and the stock closed down almost 1% due to market selling pressure dominating that day. Imperial’s new rating on AMC Entertainment was Outperform, and the new $23 price target implied an even higher upside of 32% from the prior $17.35 close. AMC shares closed up only five cents on the day of the call, and the stock was down at $17.15 late on the following day, in a 52-week range of $10.80 to $23.60.

Petrobras: Another View Into Brazil

Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. (NYSE: PBR), or Petrobras, may have had some unlucky timing for a big upgrade that came out right into the July 11 selling pressure. Barclays gave Brazil’s state-run oil giant a double-upgrade to Overweight from Underweight, along with a $14 price target.

Petrobras had closed at $10.67 ahead of this call, but its shares closed at $10.35 due to selling pressure in the market and in many oil names. Many investors also worry that Brazil puts the state and the employee interests way ahead of the interest of the investors taking the risk. U.S.-listed Petrobras shares were back up at $10.59 late the day after the sell-off, but that was still disappointing considering a double-upgrade. Petrobras has a 52-week range of $8.17 to $17.20.

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Sirius XM: Peak Auto Doesn’t Matter Here!

Sirius XM Holdings Inc. NASDAQ: SIRI) received its most bullish analyst call on Wall Street this week, with a new street-high price target being issued on Wednesday (July 11). Unfortunately, this big call came out on the day the market was down big on more trade war fears after President Trump targeted $200 billion more in goods for tariffs. Credit Suisse’s Brian Russo issued a new Outperform rating and an $8.50 price target that was 50 cents above the prior street-high target.

Despite high competition, the driving force here is a continued execution by management, stable competition and a strong stock buyback, as well as numerous other issues, to drive an implied upside of more than 20%, if the call proves accurate.

Sirius XM shares are down almost 10% from their 52-week high of $7.70, and the stock did not even trade up 1% by the end of the week. For one of the most heavily shorted stocks of them all, it was surprising that this street-high analyst call was ignored almost entirely.

Syndax: Financial Nektar from Melanoma

Syndax Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: SNDX) was given a call for exponential upside, and any excitement around this call quickly dissipated. Syndax, which is a mostly unheard of clinical-stage biotech company targeting cancers, recently announced that it and Nektar Therapeutics entered into an immuno-oncology clinical trial collaboration for metastatic melanoma.

H.C. Wainwright started the stock with a Buy rating and assigned a $30 price target on Thursday (July 12). This was a small $175 million market cap company, but the price target in this call implied some 300% upside from the previous $7.10 closing price; it was trading at $7.20 late on Friday. Syndax shares were indicated up 10% after the call, but the stock was up just 2% and the trading volume on Thursday was barely above the daily average volume.

For a reference, Syndax Pharma has a 52-week range of $6.61 to $15.20. Also worth noting is that its shares were down roughly 20% in May around Phase 2 data presented around one of its studies with Keytruda.

As a reminder, analyst calls are simply one opinion among many factors that investors have to consider. There are no assurances at all that the upside (or downside) scenarios will pan out, and it is no secret that a major market sell-off from broader topics will wipe out the upside from even the best research insight of them all. Investors should only use calls of this sort as a starting point for any true investing decisions, and many of the more speculative companies are only applicable to most aggressive investors who can tolerate much more risk than retirees and conservative investors. As always, caveat emptor!

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