24/7 Wall St. » LH

Top Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades (AAPL, ACI, ARMH, BP, GOOG, HUM, JNS, LH, PCX, SYMC, YHOO, YOKU)

Administrator — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:14:54 +0000

These are some of this Monday’s top analyst calls with upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen from Wall Street research firms.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) Reiterated Overweight at Piper Jaffray.
Arch Coal Inc. (NYSE: ACI) Cut to Sell at Goldman Sachs.
ARM Holdings plc (NASDAQ: ARMH) Raised to Buy at Goldman Sachs.
BP plc (NYSE: BP) Raised to BUy at RBS.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) reiterated Buy and raised target to $710 by Jefferies.
Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) Cut to Sell at Goldman Sachs.
Janus Capital Group Inc. (NYSE: JNS) Cut to Sell at Citigroup.
Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings (NYSE: LH) Cut to Neutral at BofA/ML.
Patriot Coal Corporation (NYSE: PCX) Raised to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC) Raised to Buy at Deutsche Bank.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) Cut to Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley.
Youku.com Inc. (NYSE: YOKU) Started as Neutral at Goldman Sachs.

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

Filed under: Analyst Calls Tagged: AAPL, ACI, ARMH, BP, GOOG, HUM, JNS, LH, PCX, SYMC, YHOO, YOKU

Top Analyst Upgrades (CBS, LH, LXK, MS, ODP, PII, DGX, TLAB, WINN)

247wallst — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:35:00 +0000

These are the few top pre-market analyst upgrades and positive research notes from Wall Street firms early this Friday morning with about two hours until the market opens:

CBS (CBS) Raised to Buy at UBS.
Laboratory Corp. (LH) Started as Outperform at RBC.
Lexmark (LXK) Raised to EqualWeight at Barclays.
Morgan Stanley (MS) Raised to Outperform at KBW.
Office Depot (ODP) raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Polaris (PII) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
Quest Diagnostics (DGX) Started as Outperform at RBC.
Tellabs (TLAB) Started as Buy at Auriga.
Winn-Dixie (WINN) Raised to Outperform at FBR.

JON C. OGG

Posted in Analyst Calls Tagged: CBS, DGX, LH, LXK, MS, ODP, PII, TLAB, WINN

Top 10 Pre-Market Analyst Calls (ANR, NILE, ENER, IFX, LH, NVS, SOV, TSCO, WY, YGE)

247wallst — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:37:41 +0000

These are ten of the analyst calls we are focusing on this Monday morning in pre-market trading:

Alpha Natural Resources (NYSE: ANR) Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
Blue Nile (NASDAQ: NILE) started as Hold at Deutsche Bank.
Energy Conversion (NASDAQ: ENER) started as Equal Weight at Lehman Brothers.
Infineon (NYSE: IFX) cut to Hold at Citigroup.
Laboratory Corp. (NYSE: LH) Started as Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
Novartis (NYSE: NVS) started as Overweight at JPMorgan.
Sovereign Banc (NYSE: SOV) raised to Outperform at KBW.
Tractor Supply (NASDAQ: TSCO) raised to Buy at UBS.
Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) cut to Hold at Deutsche Bank.
Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE) raised to Buy at Citigroup.

Jon C. Ogg
June 2, 2008

The Week of Stock Buybacks & Repurchase (COH, FIC, MIR, AVCT, HOT, AGO, HEES, CBG, TER, FDO, RWT, LH, VIGN, CSCO)

247wallst — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:39:07 +0000

Coach (NYSE:COH) has decided that the recent stock crush is a good opportunity to announce a $1 Billion share buyback plan. This represents roughly 30 million shares, or 5-times average volume; $12 Billion market cap.

Fair Isaac (NYSE:FIC) approved a $250 million share buyback plan, compared to a market cap of $2 Billion.

Mirant Corp. (NYSE:MIR) had one of the more impressive buybacks and share retirement plans announced, although its shares fell 8% because of losses. Mirant’s total return plan is some $4.6 Billion, which includes $1 Billion in open market purchases and a $ 1Billion accelerated buyback plan. This has been under review for the Special Situation Investing Newsletter.

Avocent Corp. (NASDAQ:AVCT) added 3 million shares to its stock repurchase program; Avocent has repurchased 11.2 million shares of the 12 million shares previously approved. The buyback equates to $75 million more in buybacks if completed, compared to a $1.25 Billion market cap and it represents about 8 days of trading volume.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts (NYSE:HOT) raised its dividend and added $1 Billion to share buybacks, compared to a $10.5 Billion market cap. This one has also been under review for the Special Situation Investing Newsletter.

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) approved a new share repurchaseprogram for up to 2 million of Assured’s common shares, which is about$40 million of stock compared to $1.37 Billion in market cap and about2.5 days worth of trading volume.

H&E Equipment Services,Inc. (NASDAQ:HEES) authorized a stock repurchase program for up to $100million in common stock through December 31, 2008; represents almost 6million shares and about 9-days of average volume; market cap is $675million.

CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBG) announced ashare repurchase program of up to $500 million, which is roughly 25million shares and almost 6-times average daily volume; market cap of$4.6 Billion.

Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE:TER) authorized a new StockRepurchase Program and is permitted to spend an aggregate of $400million to repurchase shares of its common stock. The company’s marketcap is $2.2 Billion, and this represents some 33 million shares oralmost 8-times average daily volume.

Despite a crummy market reception to its earnings report, Cisco Systems(NASDAQ:CSCO) repurchased some 96 million shares at an average of$31.28 during the quarter.

Family Dollar (NYSE:FDO) announced a $150 million share buyback plan.

RedwoodTrust, Inc. (NYSE:RWT) authorized a repurchase of up to 5 millionshares of common stock, which replaces a previous Board authorizationunder which Redwood purchased 7,455,000 shares of its own stock fromSeptember 1997 to November 1999.

Laboratory Corp. of America(NYSE: LH) authorized a new stock buyback plan for up to $500,000,000of its Common Stock, and it has repurchased $131.0 million of stockduring the fourth quarter and has $198.2 million remainingauthorization under the existing share repurchase plan.

Vignette(NASDAQ:VIGN) has extended the share repurchase program it began inNovember, 2006. Vignette has already purchased $75 million of commonstock under its initial program, which equates to roughly 14 percent ofshares outstanding. It has approved an extension of an additional $75million in stock buybacks.

Is this all of the share buybacks? Ofcourse not, but this is a list of some of the key buyback and sharerepurchase announcements from this week. There was another huge listof major companies still buying back stock the week before as well, andyou can access the full list here.

Jon C. Ogg
November 9, 2007

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletterthat covers special pending and unannounced share buybacks,recapitalizations, restructurings, buyout candidates, activist investoractivity, turnarounds, and industry de-mergers.

Early Research Calls 8/20/2007

247wallst — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:29:36 +0000

Merriman upgrades Taser (TASR) from neutral to buy.

Lehman (LEH) upgrades Motorola (MOT) from equal weight to overweight.

Sun Trust starts Penn Virginia with a buy and $54 price target.

Cowen upgrades Lab Corp (LH) from neutral to outperform.

RBC starts VMWare (VMW) at sector perform.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Mixed Short Interest in Drug & Medical Stocks (June 2007)

247wallst — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:16:29 +0000

As you will see, the short interest changes in medical and drug stocks of the active NYSE-listed names was a bit of a mixed bag. GlaxoSmithkline (GSK) saw the lagest increase, but its short interest is not representative of its real size or activity because it is an ADR and less active here compared to U.K. trade volume. We ranked hese in terms of percentages with the largest increase in short interest first.

STOCK (Ticker)             JUNE07    MAY07    Change
GlaxoSmithkline (GSK)    7.74M       4.15M    +86%
Boston Scientific (BSX) 32.07M    24.06M    +33.3%
Wyeth (WYE)                         3.3M    10.37M    +28.3%
Labcorp (LH)                      4.11M       3.21M    +28%
Bristol-Myers (BMY)       26.95M    23.85M    +13%
Schering-Plough (SGP) 16.79M    15.27M    +9.9%
Medtronic (MDT)             16.11M    15.19M       +6%
Pfizer (PFE)                      54.48M    52.12M    +4.5%
Quest Diagnost. (DGX) 18.00M    17.54M    +2.6%
Merck (MRK)                      22.82M    22.55M    +1.2%
Eli Lilly (LLY)                      13.77M    14.07M       -2.1%
J&J (JNJ)                            15.37M    16.16M       -4.9%
Zimmer Holdings (ZMH)    3.89M       4.13M       -5.8%
St. Jude MEdical (STJ)       6.53M       7.13M       -8.4%
Genentech (DNA)                6.87M       8.16M       -15.9%
Abbott Labs (ABT)             11.74M    16.39M       -28.3%

Jon C. Ogg
June 24, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Short Selling Up in Drug & Medical Stocks

247wallst — Tue, 22 May 2007 16:36:46 +0000

Some sectors showed mixed results in the short selling, but the Big Pharma and medical instruments and related companies saw an increased activity in short selling in May versus April. Below is the actual posting from April to May:

STOCK (Ticker)                      MAY07 APR07 Change
Pfizer (PFE)                            52.12M 50.28M 3.6%
Merck (MRK)                            22.55M 18.68M 20.6%
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) 16.16M 14.47M 11.7%
Abbott Labs (ABT)                16.39M 14.90M 10%
Wyeth (WYE)                         10.37M 9.61M    7.9%
Eli Lilly (LLY)                         14.07M 10.95M 28.5%
Bristol-Myers (BMY)             23.85M 18.75M 27.2%
Schering-Plough (SGP)       15.27M 14.09M    8.3%
Medtronic (MDT)                   15.19M 13.81M    9.9%
Boston Scientific (BSX)       24.06M 21.65M    11.1%
St. Jude MEdical (STJ)          7.13M 5.85M       21.8%
Quest Diagnost. (DGX)       17.54M 16.57M    11.1%

lower short interest…..

GlaxoSmithkline (GSK)          5.15M 4.66M -11%
Genentech (DNA)                   8.16M 8.76M -6.8%
Zimmer Holdings (ZMH)       4.13M 5.00M -17%
Labcorp (LH)                            3.21M 3.34M -3.9%

Jon C. Ogg
May 22, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.