24/7 Wall St.

While the bull market is six years old, most investors either feel the stock market needs a breather or that they are going to find their next real rewards in some of the companies that are not going to just move up or down with the Dow or S&P 500 each day. That leaves the lesser covered stocks, value stocks and other hidden gems to deliver big returns.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst upgrades and downgrades each day of the week, and there are often many hidden value stocks and stocks with massive upside in the analyst calls. Most analyst calls in Dow stocks come with predictions of 8% or 10% on the lower side, and 15% to 25% on the higher side, but other analyst calls in small cap and lesser known stocks come with upside projections that are nearly 50% and even up to 100% or more.

Investors cannot ignore the riskier nature of these stocks. Some of the analyst views mentioned are also standout calls against other analysts who have negative views of these companies. 24/7 Wall St. also showed how each consensus price target from Thomson Reuters compares to these aggressive calls, and additional color was added on each as well.

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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) may have its shares of woes, but the firm Northland Securities threw a Hail Mary pass this past Tuesday. AMD closed at $2.31 on Friday and has a consensus price target of $2.63. Northland’s new Outperform rating came with a massive $5.00 price target. This implies a 100% upside and then some, against a 52-week range of $2.14 to $4.80.

Most analysts are much more cautious in AMD, but the firm’s Gus Richards sees AMD’s data center penetration carrying the company and also believes there is a takeover chance as well. Wells Fargo has been positive on AMD for much of the downdraft, but with a fair value range that is about 10% higher than the consensus price target.

J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP) could have a lot more upside, if Piper Jaffray was right in its call this week. The firm reiterated its Overweight rating and its $15.00 price target after Mike Ullman gave a keynote presentation at its consumer conference. Piper Jaffray’s Neely Tamminga believes that J.C. Penney is on track to achieve $1.2 billion or so in EBITDA by 2017, and another takeaway was that J.C. Penney is getting ready to become aggressive to reclaim customers lost under prior management.

Piper Jaffray also has J.C. Penney as one of its top picks, but be advised that this is the most bullish view that has been offered. With shares at $8.22, Piper Jaffray is calling for 82% upside — but be advised that the consensus price is a mere $8.64.

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Vical Inc. (NASDAQ: VICL) has been on a marching rally of late, with a gain of nearly 50% this past week following positive research. Vical was started as Buy at H.C. Wainwright on Friday. The firm’s price target of $2.50, compared to a $1.47 closing price, left an implied upside of 70%. What investors need to consider here is that Roth Capital initiated coverage of Vical with a Buy rating and $4.65 price target in the prior week as well.

Vical has a checkered past, and the gains of the past week seem excessive, if you were just looking at the limited news flow around this company. What investors should keep in mind is that these are currently the only two analysts with active price targets in the data we saw. Vical has a 52-week range of $0.85 to $1.55. Investors should also keep in mind that Vical has an amended filing to raise up to $100 million in common shares, preferred shares, debt securities, and/or warrants.

Agenus Inc. (NASDAQ: AGEN) was started as Outperform at Oppenheimer on June 10. The firm’s Christopher Marai likes the immuno-oncology toolbox here so much that he assigned a price target of $14.00. This was versus a close of $8.92 before the call, implying 57% upside. Agenus closed on Friday at $9.48, leaving an implied upside of about 48%.

Marai noted that Agenus has an in-house toolkit of immuno-oncology checkpoint antibodies, anti-tumor vaccines and vaccine adjuvants, and he noted that Agenus also has valuable partnerships with Incyte and Merck. Just understand that this is more of a second half of 2015 and a 2016 story, and that the consensus price target is $10.80.

Eclipse Resources Corp. (NYSE: ECR) was raised to Outperform from Sector Perform at RBC Capital Markets last Tuesday. The exploration and production company with a focus in the Appalachian Basin was assigned a $9 price target in the call. Eclipse Resources closed at $5.82 prior to the call, implying upside of 55%. Then shares went up a tad and closed at $6.16 on Friday, still leaving an implied upside of 46%.

Eclipse’s consensus price target is $8.33 for this $1.4 billion outfit, and the company announced later in the week the launch of a $650 million senior unsecured note offering. Topeka Capital Markets initiated coverage this week as well, with a Buy rating, but it had a more tempered target of $8.00.

New Media Investment Group Inc. (NYSE: NEWM), which uses its local media outlets via GateHouse Media in community and weekly newspapers to reach roughly 14 million people per week, was started as Buy with a $37 price target on June 8. Shares were closer to $19.00 around the call, and the Friday closing price of $18.03 implies more than 100% upside expected ahead.

New Media Investment Group’s consensus analyst price target is $33.80. However, we also saw that R.F. Lafferty recently lowered its price target to $34.00 from $37.00 in New Media. Its 52-week range is $12.89 to $25.77.

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Again, any analyst call with upside of 50% to 100% or more should be assumed to automatically come with much more risk than traditional analyst calls in Dow stocks. Some additional issues to consider in analyst upgrades and initiations with huge upside price targets that are 50% to 100% higher than the share price would be that “widows and orphans” accounts are not ever supposed to look at these, nor should very conservative investors who need to rely on dividend income or a steady operating history with years of success at the company.

Analyst calls do not always work out the way they were expected to, and sometimes the analysts just turn out to be absolutely wrong in their analysis. In the days of Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure), many analysts often do not have any better insight into a company than a sophisticated outside investor who can afford to pay for strong data monitoring systems.

Another research note came out this last week from Credit Suisse’s strategists. The firm raised the S&P 500 year-end target to 2,200 from 2,170, but it also sees a 60% to 70% chance that a stock market bubble will form as well. The good news is that it is still not here, as only 1.5 of its eight criteria have gone off in the bubble gauge so far.

In case you missed out on Friday’s top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations, they included Citrix Systems, Danaher, Host Hotels, Keurig Green Mountain, Micron Technology and over a dozen more companies.

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