Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: American Eagle, Eli Lilly, GameStop, Intuit, Novavax, Nvidia, Salesforce, Schlumberger and More

Investing

Published: November 26, 2018 8:40 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 2:32 pm

Stocks were looking to open higher on Monday after the worst Thanksgiving trading week in seven years. Investors have been forced to see numerous waves of selling in 2018, and there also has been lower upside in buying immediately after the big market sell-offs than in prior years. Now is the time for investors to start considering how they want their investments and assets positioned for 2019.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each day of the week. Our goal is to find new ideas for investors and traders alike. Some of these analyst reports cover stocks to buy, while some cover stocks to sell or to avoid.

Additional commentary has been added on most of the daily analyst reports, along with trading history. The consensus analyst price targets and other valuation metrics are from the Thomson Reuters sell-side research service.

These are the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen on Monday, November 26, 2018.

American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (NYSE: AEO) was raised to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank.

Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE: LLY) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup.

Gamestop Corp. (NYSE: GME) was raised to Neutral from Underperform at Merrill Lynch. Also, Wedbush reiterated its Outperform rating and $19 target ahead of this week’s earnings report.

Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU) was raised to Outperform from Sector Perform at RBC Capital Markets.

Novavax Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX) was raised to Overweight from Neutral at Piper Jaffray. The stock was up 0.6% at $1.72 on Friday and was indicated up almost 10% at $1.89 on Monday, and it has a consensus target price of $3.80 and a 52-week trading range of $1.05 to $2.75.

Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) was started as Outperform and assigned a $225 price target at Credit Suisse. The firm noted that while its recent guidance with earnings was disappointing, it sees the reset and large drop in the shares over the past eight weeks as providing an extremely compelling entry point.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY) was reiterated as Buy with a $97 price target at Argus. The independent research firm noted that Occidental is well positioned to weather volatile energy market conditions and that it has also completed a series of asset divestitures that boosted cash and increased exposure to higher returning assets.

Orchard Therapeutics PLC (NASDAQ: ORTX) was started as Outperform with a $25 price target at Wedbush, and JPMorgan started is as Overweight. The shares closed up 4.7% at $16.80 on Friday.

Regions Financial Corp. (NYSE: RF) was raised to Overweight from Neutral at JPMorgan.

Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) was reiterated as Outperform with a $160 price target (versus a $122.03 prior close) at Wedbush. The firm sees shares of Salesforce as pretty washed out at the current levels and it expects a solid third-quarter execution to provide relief for its shares.

Schlumberger Ltd. (NYSE: SLB) was raised to Buy from Hold at HSBC.

Southern Copper Corp. (NYSE: SCCO) was downgraded to Reduce from Hold at HSBC.