One thing is for sure, we see a ton of research here at 24/7 Wall St., and we are always impressed with analysts and firms that draw a line in the proverbial sand and make a call. Way too often firms put out ambiguous, wishy-washy reports that are tagged with a Neutral or Hold rating, which to this day remain hard to decipher. The firms that do make a call, whether it is to buy or sell, especially in front of an event like earnings, are getting harder and harder to find these days.

One firm that does make calls is West Coast–based Wedbush, a top regional firm with outstanding analysts. The firm recently made two stellar calls in front of earnings on two stocks that blew them out and rocketed higher. The company has done some follow up on top technology stocks, and we found three rated Outperform at the firm that look like solid buys, as well as ones that the company pounded the table on before the earnings were released.

Amazon

This was one of the stocks the Wedbush team recommended buying before earnings, and the company knocked the earnings out of the park. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) engages in the retail sale of consumer products in North America and internationally. It operates through the North America, International and Amazon Web Services (AWS) segments.

The company sells merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors, as well as those offered by third-party sellers through retail websites. It also manufactures and sells electronic devices, including kindle e-readers, fire tablets, fire TVs and echo, as well as fire phones. It provides Kindle Direct Publishing, an online platform that allows independent authors and publishers to make their books available in the Kindle Store.

Amazon also serves developers and enterprises through the aforementioned Amazon Web Services, which provides compute, storage, database, analytics, applications and deployment services that enable virtually various businesses. AWS is the undisputed leader in the cloud now, and Deutsche Bank sees the company expanding and moving up the enterprise information value chain and addressing a larger total addressable market. The company has had numerous recent product announcements, including Aurora for relational database engine, Quicksight for business intelligence and AWS Database Migration Support Service.

The company’s revenue exploded in the first quarter, and the Wedbush team notes that after years of very uneven profitability, they feel the company is really focusing on the bottom line. Amazon absolutely annihilated analysts’ expectations on both its top and bottom lines for the first quarter. thanks mostly to its growing retail business and new cloud services. Wedbush is not alone in its bullish stance on Amazon, as many of the firms we cover on Wall Street moved their price targets higher.

The Wedbush price target was raised to $775 from $700. The Thomson/First Call consensus price target is posted at $793.23. Shares closed Friday at $659.59, up almost 10% on the day.
Cypress Semiconductor

This stock has been cut in half in less than a year. Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: CY) produces high-performance, high-quality solutions for some of the most advanced embedded systems, from automotive, industrial and networking platforms to highly interactive consumer and mobile devices.

The broad, differentiated product portfolio that includes NOR flash memories, F-RAM and SRAM, Traveo microcontrollers, the industry’s only programmable system-on-chip (PSoC) solutions, analog and power management integrated circuits (PMICs), CapSense capacitive touch-sensing controllers and Wireless BLE Bluetooth low-energy and USB connectivity solutions.

The company recently announced an expansion of its automotive portfolio that will help enable manufacturers to bring high-tech automotive systems historically available only in luxury models to mainstream vehicles. Leveraging a wide range of differentiated products that includes microcontrollers (MCUs), PMICs, memories and touch-sensing solutions, the portfolio enables value-added systems for Cypress’s top tier automotive customers.

The company beat first-quarter earnings estimates and raised its forward guidance. In addition the chief executive officer is stepping down, and the company will spend over half a billion for Broadcom’s Internet of Things business. Cypress also repurchased $182.5 million in common stock, under its $450 million repurchase authorization approved two quarters ago.

Cypress shareholders are paid a big 4.87% dividend. The Wedbush price target for the stock is $11, and the posted consensus price target is $10.75. The stock closed Friday at $9.03 per share.

Qlik Technologies

This top company has been hiring a ton of people, and its stock is down 31% since last fall. Qlik Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: QLIK) QlikView Business Discovery platform lets people quickly bring data sources together to create dynamic visual applications that can be navigated and searched intuitively. QlikView uses Natural Analytics to reflect the way human curiosity searches and processes information, while delivering the enterprise manageability, governance and service offerings organizations require.

The company’s new Qlik Sense product has helped push the company in the business intelligence and analytic, market, and it posted very solid first-quarter numbers. Qlik reported strong year-over-year revenue growth of 15%, which was 18% in constant currency, while adjusted earnings per share were unchanged from the year-ago period. The company edged up its full-year 2016 guidance on results that exceeded its expectations. We recently covered the plethora of analysts raising guidance and estimates on the company.

Wedbush raised its price target on the stock to $35 from $28, and the consensus price objective is set at $34.61. The stock closed Friday at $30.79 per share.

Solid research and follow-up is a hallmark of the work we see from Wedbush. All three of these stocks make good sense for aggressive growth stock portfolios.

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