Reuters: UBS (NYSE:UBS) will put in a new US chief.
Reuters: Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) says “dark pools” help investors.
Reuters: The US is welcoming the rise of the yuan.
Retuers: Nelson Peltz’s board seat at Legg Mason (NYSE:LM) may not signal change. Read More
This morning you are getting the broader summaries without links to VSInvestor.com because of an issue at the hosting and publishing side that has caused a temporary outage. Here are brief morning movers:
Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) and SunTrust Banks, Inc. (NYSE: STI) are both getting hit this morning on an analyst downgrade by Dick Bove. Rochdale Securities has downgraded the bank to Sell from an already cautious Neutral rating. At 8:20 AM EST we have seen STI shares down over 2.5% at $20.45 on about 10,000 shares and FITB is down over 4% at $9.92 on 65,000 shares. STI trades about 9.7 million shares per day and and FITB trades about 22 million shares per day.
CIT Group, Inc. (NYSE: CIT) is trading up this morning on news that could ultimately be bad for shareholders. CIT has amended its debt offering terms under a packaged bankruptcy reorganization. CIT is up 3.5% at $1.18 on over 400,000 shares of stock at 8:26 AM EST. As a reminder, CIT was under fire on Friday by a Carl Icahn open letter to bondholders calling that the value of the bonds could be Par (100 cents on the dollar). CIT trades close to 90 million shares per day and where this one closes today is anyone’s guess as of now.
Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) rose almost $25.00 on Friday on over 58 million shares when you include the pre-open and after-hours trading volume. Average volume here is about 7 million shares. And this morning at 8:30 AM EST we have shares up another 1.8% at $120.60 on right at 300,000 shares. This will mark new 52-week highs as the high on Friday was $119.65. Bezos always wanted to build a rocket ship, and his stock is acting like one.
BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX) is surging on H1N1 news this morning. The company’s intravenous experimental drug called peramivir received an “emergency use authorization” by the FDA as a swine flu treatment from the Food and Drug Administration as a swine flu treatment in hospitals for thoise with or suspected of having swine flu.
Legg Mason Inc. (NYSE: LM) is indicated higher. Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz will join the asset management firm’s board after his investment firm has now taken a 4.3% stake in the company. This investment is via Peltz’s Trian investment group. 3.6% at $33.05, but volume is still very thin as this is a listed stock under an NYSE specialist.
You can join our open email distribution list to get updates on top analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader alerts, IPO’s, secondary offerings, Warren Buffett and other guru activity, M&A and more.
Jon C. Ogg
October 26, 2009
Reuters: Corporate directors are on the hot seat over management pay.
Reuters: The US healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year.
Reuters: Capmark Financial filed for bankrupcy.
Reuters: The land dealer advisor resigned from Calpers. Read More
These are this Friday morning’s top 10 analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations we have seen from Wall Street’s research calls:
Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) Raised to Outperform at FBR Capital (new target $130); Raised to Overweight at Barclays; Raised to Buy at Jefferies; Raised to Buy at Janney Montgomery.
Chubb (NYSE: CB) Cut to Hold at Stifel Nicolaus.
Corrections Corp (NYSE: CXW) Started as Buy at Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey
GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) Cut to Hold at Jefferies.
Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI) Raised to Buy at Deutsche Bank.
Leap Wireless (NASDAQ: LEAP) Started as Neutral at Credit Suisse.
Legg Mason (NYSE: LM) Raised to Neutral at Credit Suisse. Credit Suisse
PNC Financial Services (NYSE: PNC) Raised to Overweight at Wells Fargo.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Inc. (NYSE: POT) Cut to Sector Perform at CIBC; targets raised to $125 at RBC and raised to $135 at Canaccord.
Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO) Raised to Overweight at Barclays.
You can join our open email distribution list to get updates on top analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader alerts, IPO’s, secondary offerings, Warren Buffett and other guru activity, M&A and more.
JON C. OGG
OCTOBER 23, 2009
The annual Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations report from the Congressional Research Service shows that the US is still by far the world’s leading arms merchant.
A summary of the document in The New York Times reports that weapons agreements with the US in 2008 totaled $37.8 billion, about 68% of the entire worldwide market in arms. It is too bad that America already has such a large share. Arms may be one of the few large businesses that the US could expand in a way that would help the trade balance, GDP, and employment. American sales were only $25.4 billion in 2007, so US arms revenue may be growing at a rate too quick to sustain. Read More
These are this Thursday’s top ten independent analyst calls with upgrades, downgrades and initiations from Wall Street brokerage firms with more than two hours until the market opens:
Corning (GLW) Started as Outperform at Morgan Keegan.
Calpine (CPN) Cut to Underperform at Jefferies.
Dynegy (DYN) Cut to Underperform at Jefferies.
Deere (DE) Raised to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Edison (EIX) Cut to Hold at Jefferies.
Ingersol-Rand (IR) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Legg Mason (LM) Raised to Hold at Deutsche Bank.
Seagate Tech (STX) Raised to Hold at Deutsche Bank.
SLM Corp. (SLM) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
VCA Antech (WOOF) Raised to Buy at Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey.
Jon C. Ogg
June 25, 2009
These are the top pre-market analyst downgrades or cautious notes we have seen early this Thursday morning from Wall Street brokerage firms with more than two hours until the market opens:
Athenahealth (ATHN) Started as Neutral at Baird.
E*TRADE (ETFC) Started as Hold at Deutsche Bank.
Legg Mason (LM) Started as Sell at Deutsche Bank.
Millicom (MICC) Cut to Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley.
Turkcell (TKC) Cut to Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley.
TD Ameritrade (AMTD) Started as Hold at Deutsche Bank.
YUM! Brands (YUM) Started as Hold at Jefferies.
Jon C. Ogg
These are some of the top pre-market analyst upgrades and downgrades from Wall Street this Monday morning:
JON C. OGG
The board of AllianceBernstein (AB), controlled by majority shareholder AXA, dumped longtime CEO Lew Sanders. The stock has been way down recently. Over the last year it is off over 70%, but so are peers Legg Mason (LM) and Janus (JNS).
It is understandable that someone had to take the fall, but the man AB brought in does not appear to have a single important qualification for the job.
These are some of the top downgrades and negative calls we are seeing from Wall Street analysts this Tuesday morning:
Jon C. Ogg
November 25, 2008
Many of the layoff announcements which came over the last several days were as unexpected as they were large. If a recession is measured by the rapidity and breadth of job losses across huge parts of the economy, the current downturn will be unusually vicious. Even highly profitable firms are resorting to firings relatively early in what is almost certain to be an extremely difficult cycle which could last for several quarters.
The cuts at Motorola (MOT) were expected. The handset division which the company planned to sell-off is so badly damaged that the firm cannot part with it. Revenue at the cell phone unit fell by 31% and only 25 million handsets were shipped, less than half of what was going out the door two years ago. Motorola has already been though two series of “downsizing”, and another 3,000 people were sent out the doors today.
These are some of the top analyst upgrades we are seeing from Wall Street this Thursday morning with about two hours to the open:
Jon C. Ogg
October 30, 2008
According to Reuters, the Treasury will make $250 billion directly into banks. Ciitgroup (C) and JPMorgan (JPM) would get $26 billion each. Merrill Lynch (MER) and Bank of America (BAC) would each get $12.5 billion.
Reuters reports that auto companies could return to Congress for help.
Reuters said Bernanke commented that the US plan should help revive credit markets.
Legg Mason Inc. (NYSE: LM) is having a rough morning to say the least. The investment manager’s shares are being hit after Credit Suisse took an already cautious Neutral rating down to an even lower Underperform rating on the stock. The $42.00 target stands, which is under current share prices by about 4%. Credit Suisse believes that the firm is going to be unable to meet earnings expectations for multiple quarters and believes this firm is going to be riddled with redemptions and client defections to other managers as end of year reviews are coming up.
These are ten of the analyst calls we are focusing on this Friday morning:
Jon C. Ogg
June 6, 2008
If there is one seer and age-old timeless veteran in value investing, it is M.J. Whitman. His Third Avenue Management, LLC has filed its 13F with the SEC and it shows he is still (or at least was) betting big on what financial guarantors, land banks, and REIT’s for a portion of his value investing assets. This total filing showed some $11.5 Billion in equity and equivalent positions (not including fixed income). What is interesting is that this is not even all of his holdings out of financial related stocks. But this is still nearly $1.2 Billion in combined assets. Below are a portion of his top holdings:
Stock (Ticker) Shares $$$$
Ambac Financial Group (ABK) 2,699,896 $69,576,000
Arch Capital Group Ltd.(ACGL) 1,461,659 $102,828,000
Legg Mason Inc. (LM) 3,343,553 $244,581,000
MBIA Inc. (MBI) 13,773,096 $236,607,000
St. Mary Land & Exploration (SM) 2,620,703 $101,185,000
The St. Joe Company (JOE) 15,347,635 $54,4995,000
Thomas Properties Group Inc. (TPGI) 2,566,549 $27,667,000
Triad Guaranty Inc (TGIC) 1,064,023 $10,427,000
USG Corporation (USG) 5,573,058 $199,460,000
Vornado Realty Trust (VNO) 1,327,543 $116,757,000
M.J. Whitman and his entire crew readily admit that they do not always catch the bottom. They try to get in before the flood gates of buyers swarm in, and sometimes they are very early and have no problem taking a 3-year or even longer time horizon. But they do try to look through the junk heap to see what can be cleaned up with some TLC. Please be advised that this is a small portion of their holdings, and that full list can be seen here.
Here are the other activist and billionaire value-esque investors we covered this weekend:
Jon C. Ogg
February 19, 2008
Chimera Investment (NYSE: CIM) is an investment vehicle that is set up to invest in mortgages per its charter, although as we noted the day of the initial filing that this is going to effectively be nothing short of a vulture fund. We have not been able to get data out of the company as of yet to see how much of the roughly $500 million raised in the IPO (before fees) has been placed in distressed assets to date, and frankly we’re pretty sure that Chimera doesn’t want that data out there.
This morning on CNBC, Dennis Gartman of the famed Gartman Letter noted besides covering short sales in many of his financial names that as far as being long any financial stocks he would look at Chimera and he noted the Annaly ties. We’ve noted how Jim Cramer already got on board with this one last month.
Also just this week (on Tuesday) Deutsche Bank initiated coverage on Chimera with a BUY rating. Keefe Bruyette Woods started this with a peer perform rating last month and they are a premiere financial sector-focused brokerage and research house.
24/7 Wall St. has been positive on the notion of this investment vehicle even since before the IPO as this is essentially run as a distressed mortgage asset buyer by the people at Annaly Mortgage (NYSE: NLY), and Annaly is roughly 10% owner of Chimera. It is our stance that the heads of Annaly know what they are doing in this sector and will be able to find value while everyone is in panic and crisis mode.
Remember that when you want to bet like a vulture investor you often do better betting on the best vulture than betting on the carcass. So in Chimera, there are opportunities for value investors and speculators alike. This has traded in a range of $14.50 to $18.83 since coming public at $15.00 in November and it closed at $17.93 yesterday.
It also appears that Legg Mason (NYSE: LM) via its Legg Mason Opportunity Trust took an 8.93% stake in the company in a December filing. Copper River Partners showed that they owned a 5.2% stake at the end of November.
Jon C. Ogg
January 17, 2008
Goldman Sachs has lowered estimates on many financial services players this morning:
Jon C. Ogg
January 10, 2008
On CNBC’s MAD MONEY tonight, Jim Cramer did his SELL BLOCK where he makes calls for selling winners or losers. Tonight he focused on legendary portfolio manager Bill Miller of Legg Mason (NYSE: LM). Miller had outperformed for many years but 2007 was another year of underperformance after an underperforming 2006. With mutual fund redemptions rising (investors withdrawing cash from stock funds) Cramer believes that this will hit Legg Mason (NYSE: LM) fairly hard and he thinks that is resembling a sell here.
Legg Mason shares closed up almost 2% today at $73.43, but the 52-week trading range is $68.35 to $110.17. More importantly, Cramer gave some of Legg Mason’s top holdings that could get hit hard if the redemptions come flying in:
Backward & Forward, Cramer In 2007 To 2008 is a full list of our top Cramer summaries with his 2007 calls that are pertinent or due for updates in 2008.
Jon C. Ogg
January 3, 2008
Krispy Kreme (KKD) Downgrades, bad numbers. You name it. Drops to $3.24 from 52-week high of $13.94.
BearingPoint (BE) Consulting firm releases numbers late, and they are bad. Drops to $4.80 from 52-week high of $9.
Office Depot (ODP) Still spinning down from bad results. Down to $17.79 from 52-week high of $44.69.
Hovnanian Enterprises (HOV) Another home builder makes another 52-week low at $9.93 down from $38.66.
Legg Mason (LM) Mutual fund company continues its fall. Moves down to $76.80 from $110.17.
DUSA Pharmaceuticals (DUSA) Quaterly results failed to impress. Off to $1.63 from 52-week high of $5.89.
Cognizant Technology (CTSH) No news. Just a bad day. Drops to $67.60 from 52-week high of $95.55.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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