Every morning there are dozens of analyst reports from Wall Street. Some offer analyst upgrades for stocks to buy, while some cover analyst downgrades for stocks to sell or to avoid. Then there are times where analysts have clustered calls on a sector.

Tuesday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades were numerous, but it turns out that the pattern for the day is that analysts are lowering or raising many of their price targets in key technology stocks.

Investors have to know that analysts raise their price targets as share prices rise, and they lower their price targets as share prices drop. That is the nature of the financial markets, and old bull market price targets just might not be possible after these stocks drop 30% or 50% in their share prices.

24/7 Wall St. could not help but notice how many estimates and price targets were lowered in the tech sector on Tuesday. Some of these cuts were not accompanied by formal downgraded ratings, but most were based on lower earnings estimates.

Akamai Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) was maintained as Buy at MKM Partners, but the firm lowered its price target to $69 from $77. It trades at about $51.00 now, within a 52-week trading range of $39.43 to $78.44.

ARM Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: ARMH) was downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Macquarie, and the price target was cut to $40 from $45. Shares were last seen at $38.50, in a 52-week range of $36.68 to $54.82. Its consensus price target was last listed as $51.40.

Autodesk Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) was maintained as Outperform at R.W. Baird, which lowered its price target to $55 from $60. UBS has a Neutral rating but cut its price target to $45 from $65. Autodesk was last seen down 0.8% at $44.53. Its consensus analyst target was listed at $63.72, and its 52-week range is $41.60 to $65.78.

Blucora Inc. (NASDAQ: BCOR) was last seen on Tuesday trading down almost 5% at $6.70. Last week’s earnings prompted Benchmark to keep a Buy rating but cut its price target to $13 from $20. The stock’s consensus target price was last seen at $14.40. Blucora is the former InfoSpace — it changed names in 2012 — with metasearch engines Dogpile, WebCrawler and MetaCrawler.

Broadcom Ltd. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is the combined Avago and Broadcom — actually Avago bought Broadcom and then rolled up the new entity and kept the better identifiable name of Broadcom. Credit Suisse reinstated its coverage as Outperform with a price target of $160. JPMorgan’s reinstated coverage was also at Overweight, but with a $170 target. Broadcom’s share price was last seen up 2.3% at $124.50, with an adjusted 52-week range of $100.00 to $150.50 and with a consensus target price of about $171.00.

Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: BRCD) was maintained as Neutral at Goldman Sachs, but the firm cut its price target to $11 from $12. After a discussion of new 5G offerings, its shares were last seen up by 5.6% at $8.25, with a consensus target price of $10.37 and a 52-week range of $7.40 to $12.96.

Citrix Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) was maintained as Hold by Piper Jaffray, but the firm raised its price target to $78 from $76. Citrix was last seen trading up 0.4% at $64.57, and its consensus analyst target was $81.44. The 52-week trading range is $59.00 to $84.17.
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (NASDAQ: CTSH) was maintained as Outperform at Credit Suisse, but the firm cut its price target to $71 from $75. Cognizant shares were last seen trading up 0.6% at $54.20, and its consensus target price was $70.23, with a 52-week range of $51.22 to $69.80.

HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) remains under $10.00 on a post-split basis. Monness Crespi Hardt maintained its Buy rating but lowered its price target to $12 from $16. Shares of HP were trading up 2.5% at $9.65, and the consensus analyst target price was $14.63. The have a 52-week trading range of $8.91 to $17.65.

Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) was maintained as Buy at Piper Jaffray, but the firm lowered its price target to $43 from $46. Oracle shares were recently trading relatively flat at $35.58. Its consensus target price was $44.00, with a 52-week trading range of $33.13 to $45.24.

Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform at Sanford Bernstein. Shares were recently trading up 3.6% at $46.18. Its consensus analyst target price was $57.46 and the 52-week range is $42.24 to $74.09.

Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) was maintained as Buy at Piper Jaffray, but the firm lowered its price target to $78 from $95. Red Hat recently traded down 1.4% at $63.22, and its consensus analyst target was $89.63, with a 52-week trading range of $59.59 to $84.44.

Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) was maintained as Buy at Piper Jaffray, but the firm lowered its price target to $66 from $84. Salesforce was last seen trading down 1.2% at $58.94. Its consensus target price was $88.58 and the 52-week range is $53.60 to $82.90.

Twitter Inc. (NASDAQ: TWTR) may be deemed more social media than tech, but the social media space falls under tech and has too few real players to even have a sector of its own. MKM Partners kept its Neutral rating but lowered its fair value estimate to $18 from $29. Twitter shares were last seen trading up 0.9% at $16.03, with a consensus target price of $21.97 and a 52-week range of $13.91 to $53.49.

VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) remains the whipping boy in the Dell-EMC deal. Piper Jaffray lowered its price target to $55 from $65. Other firms have continued to lower their expected price targets as well in recent months, now that the stock has fallen more than 50%. Shares of VMware were up 1.1% at $45.49 on Tuesday, and its consensus target price was $62.30. The 52-week range is $43.25 to $93.43.

Web.Com Group Inc. (NASDAQ: WEB), formerly with the WWWW stock ticker, was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank, which also lowered its price target to $19 from $31. That takes Deutsche Bank from being almost the highest price target ($33) to almost the lowest ($17). The stock recently traded down 1% to $24.72. Its consensus analyst target was $28.55, with a 52-week range of $14.52 to $26.04.

One last word about consensus analyst price targets: These come from Thomson/First Call, but they sometimes take many days to update and often are not reflective of the real sentiment, if many target prices have changed in the past few days or hours.

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