AAR Corporation (NYSE: AIR) named Bear of the Day at Zacks.

AGCO Corporation (NYSE: AGCO) named Bull of the Day at Zacks.

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) Raised to Buy at Janney Capital.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse.

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) Cut to Hold at Needham.

Colgate-Palmolive Co. (NYSE: CL) Raised to Buy at Argus.

Dominion Resources, Inc. (NYSE: D) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.

Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.

Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN) Raised to Buy at Citigroup; Raised to Buy at Stern Agee.

Infoblox Inc. (NYSE: BLOX) Started as Equal-weight at Morgan Stanley; Started as Overweight at Stephens; Started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.

Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. (NASDAQ: JBHT) Started as Outperform at William Blair.

Juniper Networks, Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.

McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD) Cut to Neutral at Cowen.

Par Pharmaceutical Companies Inc. (NYSE: PRX) named value stock of the day at Zacks.

Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) Started as Buy at Citigroup.

Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU) Cut to Hold at Argus.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (NYSE: RBS) Raised to Equalweight at Morgan Stanley.

Southern Company (NYSE: SO) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.

Total SA (NYSE: TOT) Raised to Buy at UBS.

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JON C. OGG

Assurant Inc. (NYSE: AIZ) Cut to Underperform at BofA/ML.

Cerner Corporation (NASDAQ: CERN) named as Bull of the Day at Zacks.

Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE: CHK) Cut to Neutral at R.W. Baird.

China Life Insurance (NYSE: LFC) named Bear of the Day at Zacks.

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) Cut to Underperform at BofA/ML; Started as Overweight at JPMorgan.

Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) Raised to Neutral at BofA/ML.

Genworth Financial (NYSE: GNW) Raised to Neutral at BofA/ML.

Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE: HLF) Raised to Buy at Auriga.

RadioShack (NYSE: RSH) Cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley.

STMicroelectronics NV (NYSE: STM) Raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs; Raised to Neutral at Citigroup.

Terex Corporation (NYSE: TEX) Started as Outperform at Credit Suisse.

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JON C. OGG

Many of Apple’s suppliers are well-known, but the list includes Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD), Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: CY), Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM), Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc. (NYSE: FCS), Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX), Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL), Vishay Intertechnology Inc. (NYSE: VSH), TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. (NASDAQ: TQNT), SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK), ON Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: ONNN), and Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM).

The report is based on 229 audits, of which 14 were specialized environmental audits and 27 process safety audits. Apple found 6 current cases of suppliers hiring underage workers and 13 historical cases of child labor violations. About these violations, the company said:

In each case, the facility had insufficient controls to verify age or detect false documentation. We found no instances of intentional hiring of underage labor. We required the suppliers to support the young workers’ return to school and to improve their management systems—such as labor recruitment practices and age verification procedures—to prevent recurrences.

Chinese environmental groups last year charged that 27 of Apple’s suppliers were dumping toxic gases and heavy metal sludges into the country’s land and air. The company’s audits revealed that 112 supplier facilities were not properly storing, moving, or handling hazardous chemicals correctly; 69 facilities were illegally dumping or failing to recycle hazardous waste; and 52 facilities failed to label hazardous materials. Apple also reported that 58 facilities failed to monitor and control air emissions.

Apple had come under increasing pressure to name its suppliers and to hold them to a higher standard following suicide attempts by 18 workers and 14 deaths at China’s Foxconn facility in 2010.

Paul Ausick

Benchmark Electronics Inc. (NYSE: BHE), Celestica Inc. (NYSE: CLS), Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX), Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL), and Sanmina-SCI Corporation (NASDAQ: SANM) all hang in the balance.  Unfortunately, the consumer move to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Apple’s use of Foxconn is another wildcard (even with its suicide problems) because much of the business goes in that direction.  Still, upside remains in some of these names as most of these companies get business from multiple sectors outside of technology manufacturing.

We have looked at the current share price along with recent share performance.  Also considered is the fundamental trends behind each, as well as the consensus price target from Thomson Reuters and current and forward price/earnings analysis.

Benchmark Electronics Inc. (NYSE: BHE) trades around $15.00 and the 52-week range is $12.01 to $20.24.  With an $870 million market value, this one trades at 17-times expected earnings and 15-times expected 2012 earnings.  Thomson Reuters has a mean price target objective of $14.90, indicating implied upside is non-existent.

Celestica Inc. (NYSE: CLS) trades around $8.00 and the 52-week range is $6.79 to $12.48, it is worth about $1.7 billion market value, this one trades at under 8-times expected earnings and slightly further under 8-times expected 2012 earnings. Thomson Reuters has a mean price target objective of $9.88, indicating implied upside of about 23%.

Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX) trades around $6.00, its 52-week range is $5.05 to $8.50, and it has a market cap of $4.3 billion, and .  With an $870 million market value.  Flextronics trades at 7-times expected earnings and about 5.6-times expected 2012 earnings. Thomson Reuters has a mean price target of $8.00, indicating implied upside of about 33%.

Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL) trades around $21.40 and the 52-week range is $13.94 to $23.09, so it is the least punished of the whole EMS lot.  Jabil has a market value of about $4.4 billion.  Its fiscal year is not until August, so its expected earnings multiple today is about 8.3-times expected earnings. Thomson Reuters has a mean price target of $23.73, indicating implied upside of about 10%.

Sanmina-SCI Corporation (NASDAQ: SANM) has a price of about $9.75 and the market value is just under $800 million.  Its 52-week range is $6.01 to $17.32.  Its fiscal year ends in September and it trades at a mere 6.7-times expected earnings. Thomson Reuters has a mean price target objective of $10.88, indicating implied upside of about 11%.

The achilles heel for these companies and their valuation is that all are international today and none of the group mentioned offer dividends to reward shareholders during the economic lull. 

The good news is that these companies add and contract with the global trends. A slower India and China are not helping, but Japan has been coming back on after last year’s earthquake and tsunami wiped out the Japanese growth story.  These companies are also tending to a poor European situation right now.  Most earnings estimates for the year have already come down in recent weeks, but the question is whether or not those have come down enough.

JON C. OGG

San Jose-based SunPower, which is majority-owned by French oil and gas major Total (NYSE: TOT), received a $1.24 billion guarantee for its California Valley Solar Ranch project. This 250 megawatt facility, which is being built in San Luis Obispo County, is expected to harness enough PV energy to power more than 64,000 homes and cut carbon emissions of some 425,000 metric tons into the atmosphere annually. Additionally, officials in both the administrations of President Barack Obama and California Governor Jerry Brown boast the federal incentives will help to fund employment of some 350 jobs during build-out — from architects and electricians to delivery drivers and pipefitters.

“None Love the Bearer of Bad News”

The ancient Greek playwright Sophocles (496 BC – 406 BC) reminds us that no one likes to hear the bad news. Well, too bad: When construction winds down in the next 18 to 24 months, permanent jobs created at Solar Valley are expected to number fifteen — at best!

Backers of the PV-scale utility counter that $315 million will be injected into the local economy through direct and indirect impacts over the life of the project, from an influx of spending dollars (worker wages) to resultant savings from smaller fossil fuel imprints.

“Since light travels faster than sound, isn’t that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak?”  (Steven Wright, comedian)

SunPower management and Governor Brown have boasted, too, that the project will nourish growth of  additional manufacturing jobs in the state, as solar panels for the Solar Valley facility will be supplied by the company’s new 75-megawatt (MW) plant located in Milpitas, a suburb of San Jose. Not to be repetitive, but, duh, think again.

The Milpitas plant was built in partnership with Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX), a Singapore-based electronics subcontractor used by U.S. semiconductor companies to assemble chips more cheaply offshore. The taste of irony is that in addition to partnering with a company that steals U.S. manufacturing jobs, SunPower used DOE funding “to develop both a more efficient panel and lower-cost process for producing the panel,” according to Julie Blunden, SunPower Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Policy. Though the facility has some 100 employees, doing mundane tasks like soldering the strings of solar cells together or quality-control inspections, the bulk of the PV module process is highly automated.

Meeting Demand Close to Home — in Mexico

It is likely, too, that this additional DOE “seed money” will have unintended consequences, in particular, job destruction: Silicon Valley, as admitted by Blunden, is a relatively high-cost labor center. Module prices are anticipated to fall even further next year, as Chinese solar module makers — reputed to be running at less than 50% capacity due to weak demand in Europe — flood global markets with even cheaper products across the PV supply chain. Facing such fierce competition and continued module oversupply, the 10Q Detective suspects SunPower will not be doing much more hiring in the U.S. — of humans, that is.

Memo to Secretary Chu and Governor Brown: the billion given to SunPower will help grow employment, just not in the U.S. Collapsing margins have forced SunPower to ship hoped-for manufacturing jobs outside our borders. In addition to ramping up component manufacturing in Malaysia, the company announced last month that it is constructing a manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to assemble the solar panels to be installed at the Valley Solar power station!

First Solar Received Federal Guarantees of $3.07 Billion

In the past three months, Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar has received federal loan guarantees totaling more than $3.0 billion for two solar farms in California (230-MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project and 550-MW Desert Sunlight plant) and a 290-MW PV power plant in Yuma County, Arizona (Agua Caliente Solar). The global leader in PV module shipments is expected to use the stimulus funding to hire more than 1,300 construction workers needed to install its Cadmium Telluride (Cd-Te) thin-film panels.

Similar to SunPower, however, permanent jobs created will pale in comparison to dollars spent on the projects — just 40 to 50 operations jobs! Additionally, despite best intentions, most of the jobs necessary to assemble components and modules required for these projects will likely go to workers in countries located outside the U.S., in particular Malaysia:

• First Solar has 24 production lines in Malaysia, compared to just 4 at its Ohio plant.
• The four plants located in Kulim, Malaysia, employ some 3,400 and have nameplate capacity of 1.4-GW, or about 68% of annual production; the Perrysburg, Ohio, factory employs about 500 and produces about 248-MW annually, or about 11% of total annual output of 2.2 gigawatts.

First Solar Plans $300-Million Factory

Those bullish on solar will argue with my math and point to First Solar’s construction of a $300 million factory in Mesa, Ariz., as proof of the worthiness and economic value behind the DOE’s investments. First Solar promises to hire 600 at first — with expectations to bring on as many as 4,800 workers as it ramps up capacity to meet demand for its thin-film PV panels in solar farms across the southwestern U.S.

Unfortunately, falling profits will likely force First Solar to back away from its ambitious plan to expand U.S. manufacturing capacity: Second-quarter gross margin fell to 36.6%, from 45.8% in the prior quarter, as average selling prices plummeted by 13%.

“Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions, Not Bad Ones.”

As judiciously noted by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950), politicians’ inventive scheming to grow “green” jobs in the U.S. by rushing through DOE-backed solar loans could ultimately prove disastrous for U.S. taxpayers. Ignorance of industry dynamics has already been demonstrated by those in charge of the cash register: $528 million lost in the growing Solyndra bankruptcy scandal!

To paraphrase the late satirist Will Rogers: “The woods are full of people who learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.” Sadly, the corridors of power in Washington DC appear to be crowded with those that can neither write nor read. Expect more millions to be lost in the sake of “jobs creation.”

David Phillips

No money was injured while filming

If you have been a reader of 24/7 Wall St. for long, you know that we appreciate companies that pay dividends just about as much the investors who buy companies because of their great dividends.  With all of the uncertainty in today’s markets and in today’s economy, having a solid dividend policy may be the key to keeping nervous investors from fleeing and going into cash or other assets that actually pay no income at all.  Some of the greatest companies of today and yesteryear actually refuse to pay dividends to shareholders.  For some companies, they can get away without paying a cent to owners because the value and growth is so strong.  There is another list of “Dividend Sinners” which should be paying a dividend to holders and have just decided to control that cash in-house instead.

We have identified more than twenty Dividend Sinners. Our review focuses on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A), Cincinnati Bell Inc. (NYSE: CBB), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Dollar General Corporation (NYSE: DG ), Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ: DLTR), eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), Express Scripts, Inc. (NASDAQ: ESRX), Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Jack In The Box Inc. (NASDAQ: JACK), Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NASDAQ: NDAQ), Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC), United Continental Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: UAL), Urban Outfitters, Inc. (NASDAQ: URBN), Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), and Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ZBRA).

You can see that many of these are not technology giants.  Many are.  The aim is to handicap which companies still can get away without paying out income to their shareholders versus those which can and should.  Some of the more obvious Dividend Sinners are the same as you have seen criticized before, but many of these are overlooked by the media and by investors alike.  In some cases the lack of dividend payments is just ludicrous.  Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) waited far too long to adopt a dividend policy and look what happened to its shares after inaction.  Kohl’s Corporation (NYSE: KSS) took until this year before finally declaring a dividend while its direct competitors have paid dividends for years.

Again, some companies can get away without paying holders a penny.  Our aim was to identify the highly able companies and those which lag peers enough that the dividend trend just needs to be considered by management of these companies. We looked at forward P/E ratios based upon next year’s estimates from Thomson Reuters, the return on equity (ROE) from Finviz.com, the current share price and a 52-week trading range, along with the market cap of each company.  If applicable, we handicapped competitor and peer dividends and even noted how high of a dividend these companies could pay out.

Activist investors could have a field-day with at least a few of these dividend sinners…

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is the online retail king.  It has a forward price earnings multiple of 56 and a return on equity (ROE) of 16.3%.  Its market cap is $100 billion. The recent share price was $222 and the 52-week trading range is $114.51 to $227.20.  While much of the tone of this article might seem to be geared around a negative impact of a no-dividend policy, Amazon.com is actually in a different camp.  At 58-times 2012 projected earnings, the question to ask is “how high of a dividend could it pay anyway?”… Wall Street has even been able to absorb habitually lower and lower margins as it ramps up its capital spending.  With shares having now hit the $100 billion market cap and having hit fresh all-time highs, is there are reason to criticize the company right now?  We predicted that it would be on of the next mega-cap stocks for a reason.

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) is due with earnings shortly and its path has been a boring one for long enough.  The largest independent biotech outfit has a forward price earnings multiple of 9.7 and a return on equity (ROE) of 19.4%.  Its market cap is $51 billion.  The recent share price was $54.00 and the 52-week trading range is $50.26 to $61.53.  Investors hope and pray that Amgen will be the first of the big biotechs to finally declare a dividend.  The call has been a longstanding call and the company has more than enough ample cash and patent protection to justify a healthy payout.  With about $15 billion in liquidity and $10 billion in long-term debt, investors should ask the company to stop wasting the cash by repurchasing shares in the open market.  It hasn’t worked as is the case with most share buyback plans.  If it is not going to have a dividend, maybe it should consider growing into new arenas with a substantial acquisition.  Our take is that Amgen is going to have to do something at some point soon and a dividend will do far better than a stock buyback plan.

Johnson announced on Monday that it would spend $138.5 million to convert a plant from the manufacture of standard absorbent glass mat (AGM) batteries to the manufacture of start-stop batteries. Johnson said that the global market for start-stop batteries will grow to 35 million units by 2015, up from about 6 million today. By 2020, Johnson expects to see a global market of around 95 million units.

Start-stop technology turns off a car’s engine whenever the car stops and then automatically restarts the car when the driver lets up on the brakes. Standard AGM batteries can’t handle the number of cycles or the accessory load demands of start-stop technology. A vehicle equipped with the technology could cut CO2 emissions and fuel consumption by 5%-12%.

Johnson raised its fiscal 2011 guidance to $38.5 billion in revenues back in January, and then raised guidance again to $39.5 billion in April. That includes a projected hit to revenues of $500 million due to disruption to Japanese automakers as a result of the earthquake and tsunami.

While the company’s price/book ratio is a fairly high 2.48, Johnson’s trailing P/E is 17.48 and its forward P/E is 12.46. The median stock price target is $48/share, and at mid-day shares are trading up about 1.5%, at $40.77, within a 52-week range of $26.07-$42.53.

Johnson seems solidly committed to the start-stop market, and Exide is gearing up as well. Exide projects a start-stop market of about 25 million units globally in 2015. Exide’s trailing P/E is 22.79, while its forward P/E is just 6.43. The company’s price/book ratio is just 1.42 and the median price target is $12/share. The company’s shares are up about 0.7% around noon today, at $7.48, within a 12-month range of $4.12-$12.68.

Another competitor in the start-stop space is Maxwell Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: MXWL), makers of a device known as an ultracapacitor. Earlier this year Maxwell signed a deal with Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) to include Maxwell’s ultracapacitors in Flextronics-designed systems. Maxwell is, perhaps, overvalued, with a negative trailing P/E, a forward P/E of 25.22 and a price/book ratio of 4.41. The company’s median price target is $21/share, about $1.50 above the top of Maxwell’s 52-week range.

Paul Ausick

GT Solar International, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOLR) reported first-quarter earnings last night and the company posted EPS of $0.41 on revenue of $272 million. Analysts had been expecting EPS of $0.34 on revenue of $224 million, so GT Solar really stomped on the estimates. The company’s shares put up a new 52-week high this morning to post a new 52-week range of $4.96-$13.35.

The company makes the manufacturing equipment for solar PV makers. It took new orders during the quarter of $722 million, and has boosted both its full-year revenue forecast from $850 million-$1 billion to $1-$1.1 billion. The company also raised EPS guidance from $1.25-$1.50 to $1.55-$1.85.

Even though most solar PV makers are expecting an oversupply in 2011, many are going ahead with capacity expansion plans. That gives GT Solar and competitors like Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) some fertile ground for sales in 2011. GT Solar also makes furnaces that are used in the manufacture of LEDs, another product that is expected to see good growth in 2011.

Another solar winner is the flexible thin-film technology known as CIGS, for copper indium gallium diselenide. Swiss scientists have posted a new record for CIGS energy conversion efficiency of 18.7%. The US National Renewable Energy Lab has also tested a CIGS cell that posts an energy conversion efficiency of 19.9%, but that technology is slightly different.

Thin-film leader First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) has been working on developing its own CIGS panels, and was once rumored to be in talks to acquire privately held HelioVolt. The rumors haven’t panned out yet, and may never do so. Still, the CIGS technology seems to be a significant jump up in efficiency from the cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology that First Solar currently uses. CIGS technology could also lower total systems costs, called ‘balance of systems’ or BoS cost because they are lighter and don’t require all the heavy support structure of silicon-based PV systems.

The solar loser — again — is Evergreen Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: ESLR), which has seen the state of Massachusetts kill two of the company’s tax breaks following the shutdown of Evergreen’s Devens plant which cost 800 workers their jobs. The state has sent Evergreen a retroactive property tax bill for $1.5 million and has eliminated $7.5 million in tax credits. Evergreen’s shares are trading at $0.76, very close to the bottom of their 52-week range of $0.71-$7.14.

China grew its wind generation capacity by 62% in 2010, to a total of nearly 42,000 megawatts. But the country’s progress may be slowing down this year as a result of the difficulty of connecting wind power plants to the country’s electricity grid. [http://247wallst.com/2011/04/27/alternative-energy-watch-china-plans-to-spend-big-on-grid-equipment-maker-gets-big-order-solr-amat-ldk-cree-veco-amsc/] Approximately 30% of the country’s wind generation is stranded, and there are other troubles as well.

Chinese law requires that 70% of wind projects use local sources and, in many cases, foreign countries that want to build alt energy projects in China must have a China-based partner and must sign a technology transfer agreement. On a more positive note, China has enacted a law mandating compulsory cross-licensing of alt energy technology and recently passed another law that allows companies to obtain a license to use a patent that its owner is not developing. These licensing rules have allowed the country’s big wind turbine manufacturers, Goldwind, Sinovel, and DongFang Electric, to corner more than 50% of the wind turbine market in China.

Ultracapacitor maker Maxwell Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: MXWL) and the automotive division of Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) have signed an agreement under which Maxwell will supply its ultracapacitors to Flextronics for use in regenerative braking systems and for start-stop systems in automobiles. Ultracapacitors act like batteries and store/discharge electricity very quickly over a wide range of temperatures and over a large number of cycles.

Finally, a divorce. Johnson Controls Inc. (NYSE: JCI) has filed papers to dissolve its joint venture with France’s Saft Groupe SA. The JV was developing lithium-ion batteries for hybrid and all-electric vehicles. The joint company has deals with Daimler Benz, BMW, China’s Chery, and US carmakers Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM). Johnson Controls will pay Saft $64 million for its part of the JV.

Paul Ausick

AGCO Corporation (NASDAQ: AGCO) Maintained Outperform as Bull of the Day at Zacks.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) Reiterated Buy and Raised target to $415 from $375 at Argus.
Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) has seen its targets raised at Citigroup, BofA/ML, and Goldman Sachs.
Badger Meter, Inc. (NYSE: BMI) Maintained Underperform as Bear of the Day at Zacks.
Colgate-Palmolive Co. (NYSE: CL) Raised to Buy at Deutsche Bank.
Dendreon Corporation (NASDAQ: DNDN) Started as Buy at ThinkEquity.
The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) Cut to Hold at Argus.
InfoSpace Inc. (NASDAQ: INSP) Raised to Buy at S&P Equity Research (late-Thursday call).
Molson Coors Brewing Company (NYSE: TAP) Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: REGN) Cut to Sector Perform at RBC.
Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ: RIMM) Has been downgraded to Underperform at Jefferies and downgraded by at least two Canadian brokerages on its warning.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (NYSE: TSM) has seen targets raised by Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs.
Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO) Reiterated Buy and raised target to $35 from $32 at Argus.
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) Cut to Hold at Citigroup.
W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE: GWW) Raised to Neutral at BofA/ML.

This is an update from yesterday but we highlighted a technical analysis call from Bank of America Merrill Lynch that was effectively assigning the possibility of $80.00 silver, which would be yet another huge boom for shares of iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) and ETFS Physical Silver Shares (NYSE: SIVR).

You can join our free daily email distribution list to hear more about analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader and active trader alerts, dividend trends, news on Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

JON C. OGG

Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG) Cut to Sector Perform at RBC.
Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE: CHK) Raised to Buy at Canaccord Genuity.
Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN) Started as Outperform at Wells Fargo.
Flextronics International Ltd. (NASDAQ: FLEX) Raised to Buy at Collins Stewart.
Guess? Inc. (NYSE: GES) Removed from Focus List at Credit Suisse.
Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU) Cut to Underperform at BofA/ML.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) Raised to Outperform as Bull of the Day at Zacks.
Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. (NYSE: RL) Removed from Focus List at Credit Suisse.
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan.
Saks Incorporated (NYSE: SKS) Raised to Neutral at BofA/ML.
Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) Raised to Buy at S&P Equity Research (late-Wednesday call).
Strayer Education Inc. (NASDAQ: STRA) maintained Underperform as Bear of the Day at Zacks.
Tellabs Inc. (NASDAQ: TLAB) Started as Market Perform at Wells Fargo.
Zale Corporation (NYSE: ZLC) Raised to Neutral at BofA/ML.

You can join our free daily email distribution list to hear more about analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader and active trader alerts, dividend trends, news on Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

JON C. OGG