One advantage of daily covering many of the top brokerage and financial firms here at 24/7 Wall St. is that we often receive some good color on what the professionals are buying and selling. And often, but certainly not always, that can translate into stocks that may be headed higher in the very near future.
A recent report from the trading desk at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey noted that after the steep sell-off, the buyers poured back in and technology was one of the sectors they were buying in addition to some defensive ones like utilities and materials
The SunTrust traders also focused in on some of the stocks that the investors were buying, some of which look like outstanding ideas for not only the near term, but solid trades for the rest of 2018.
Here we focused on five that have a large following across Wall Street and that have Buy ratings from analysts.
Belden
This one was just raised to a Buy at SunTrust. Belden Inc. (NYSE: BDC) is a signal transmission solutions provider company that operates through five segments: Broadcast Solutions, Enterprise Connectivity Solutions, Industrial Connectivity Solutions, Industrial IT Solutions and Network Security Solutions.
The company’s portfolio of signal transmission solutions provides transmission of data, sound and video for various applications. Belden sells its products to distributors, end users, installers and original equipment manufacturers. The company has manufacturing facilities in the United States and other manufacturing and operating facilities in Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico and St. Kitts, as well as in various countries in Europe.
Investors in Belden are paid a small 0.3% dividend. The SunTrust price target for the shares is $81, though the Wall Street consensus target was last seen at $89.70. The stock was trading early Wednesday at $68.95 a share.
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Cypress Semiconductor
This stock traded in a tight range from March until last month, but it got hit hard on earnings. Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: CY) manufactures and sells embedded system solutions for the automotive, industrial, home automation and appliances, consumer electronics and medical markets.
Its product portfolio includes programmable-systems-on-chip (PSoC), general purpose microcontrollers, analog integrated circuits, USB controllers, connectivity chips (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Zigbee) and memory chips.
Cypress shareholders are paid a 2.66% dividend. Merrill Lynch has a price objective of $22 for the shares, and that compares with the posted consensus price target of $20.15. The stock traded at $16.80 per share Wednesday morning.
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Hewlett Packard Enterprise
This was part of the big split in operations at the iconic Hewlett-Packard. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (NYSE: HPE) is now an industry leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio, spanning the cloud to the data center to workplace applications, the company’s technology and services help customers around the world make IT more efficient, more productive and more secure.
The company operates under four segments. The Enterprise Group (50% of revenue) has servers, storage, networking hardware and technology services. Enterprise Services (37% of revenue) has a broad IT outsourcing focus. Software (7% of revenue) and Financial Services (7% of revenue) make up the remaining portfolio. The company has leading market share across many of its businesses.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise also has a partnership with Microsoft to offer new innovation in Hybrid Cloud computing through Microsoft Azure and Hewlett Packard Enterprise infrastructure and services and new program offerings. The extended partnership appoints Microsoft Azure as a preferred public cloud partner.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise shareholders receive a 1.71% dividend. The $20 Deutsche Bank price target compares with the $19.13 posted consensus target. The shares were trading at $17.50 on Wednesday.
Marvell Technology
This company made a bold $6 billion bid to buy Cavium late last year. Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) is a fabless supplier of mixed-signal and analog semiconductor products to a number of storage, computing and communication applications, including hard disk drives, personal computers, servers, Ethernet switches, printers and connectivity markets.
Top analysts around Wall Street are very positive on the company’s purchase of Cavium, and many feel the deal adds significantly to the growth element for the stock. The addition also helps make Marvell solidly positioned in data center, cloud, enterprise, security and 5G.
Marvell shareholders receive a 1.28% dividend. The analysts at Merrill Lynch have set their price target at $28. The consensus price objective is in line at $27.69, and the stock was last seen trading at $20.95.
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Micron Technology
This is a global leader in advanced semiconductor systems. Micron Technology Inc.’s (NASDAQ: MU) broad portfolio of high-performance memory technologies, including DRAM, NAND and NOR flash, is the basis for solid state drives, modules, multichip packages and other system solutions. Its memory chip solutions enable the world’s most innovative computing, consumer, enterprise storage, networking, mobile, embedded and automotive applications.
Micron and Intel announced last year the availability of their 3D NAND technology, the world’s highest-density flash memory. Flash is the storage technology used inside the lightest laptops, fastest data centers and nearly every cell phone, tablet and mobile device.
The company posted outstanding quarterly earnings recently and also provided forward guidance that exceeded Wall Street estimates. With memory demand drivers remaining somewhat underappreciated and with solid demand from end-markets such as data center, artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, big data, mobile and autonomous driving, Micron continues to execute well on its manufacturing road map. The analysts expect the company to drive gross and operating margins higher in 2018, even if prices return to a more typical deflationary environment.
Merrill Lynch has a whopping price target of $85. The consensus target for the stock is $66.68, and shares were trading at $53.30.
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These are five top companies that the traders at SunTrust saw some solid buying in, and they could very well be set up for a solid first quarter. One thing’s for sure: anytime there is enough buying to mention specific companies, there is often a reason.
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