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5 Under-the-Radar Analyst Upgrades on Monday: Exxon Mobil, GTT, Harris, Melco Crown and Raytheon

Monday was one of those days when many analyst upgrades and downgrades were seen. 24/7 Wall St. covers many of the analyst calls made each morning of the week, but sometimes there are key analyst upgrades or newly initiated analyst calls that are either missed early in the morning or that fail to make it on to our morning report.

The Dow has now risen more than 1,000 Dow points from the lows of the post-payrolls data. Investors have proven over and over that they will buy their favorite stocks on weakness.

Monday’s top analyst upgrades and downgrades included EMC, Goldman Sachs, Linn Energy, MGIC Investments, Marvell Technology, NetApp and over a dozen more companies. Here are five such analyst upgrades and positive initiations seen from Monday that were under the radar earlier Monday morning.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) may not seem like much of an analyst upgrade on the surface. That being said, Big Oil should be thankful for any good news it can find. Barclays raised its rating to Equal Weight from Underweight. That is like being raised to a Neutral or Hold from a Sell rating at other shops.

Barclays also raised its price target to $85.00 from $80.00 in its call. It turns out that the drop in energy shares on Monday somewhat had spared Exxon Mobil. Its stock was down only 0.2% at $79.06, with a consensus analyst price target of about $81.50 and a 52-week range of $66.55 to $97.20. As a reminder, Exxon Mobil also has a yield of close to 4% that gets added on to would-be gains.

GTT Communications Inc. (NYSE: GTT) is not very well known by the investing community. Its Tier1 IP network allows customers to connect to any location in the world and with any application in the cloud. The company also announced a $175 million buyout of One Source Networks in mid-September.

Now we have Cowen issuing an Outperform rating on Monday. The firm also gave a $31.00 price target that is above the $29.80 consensus analyst price target versus a prior $23.55 close. GTT’s market cap is about $840 million, but shares were up 2.2% at $24.07 late in Monday’s trading session.

Harris Corp. (NYSE: HRS) may have announced a new international supply pact for tactical radios this morning, but the company also received two different analyst upgrades or positive research calls. JPMorgan raised its rating to Overweight from Neutral and RBC Capital Markets started coverage with an Outperform rating. JPMorgan gave a $91 target and RBS gave a $90 price target.

Harris Corp. shares were up 1.6% at $76.93 late on Monday. Its consensus analyst price target is up at $92.86, and it has a 2.6% dividend yield. Harris has a 52-week trading range of $60.78 to $84.78.

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Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd. (NASDAQ: MPEL) is one of the top destinations for gambling in Macau. Unlike the U.S.-based casinos which have Las Vegas to offset the weakness from Macau, Melco Crown’s main focus is Macau. Despite a directionless day, Melco Crown shares were up 0.4% at $17.53. Its consensus analyst price target is $22.77 and the 52-week range is $12.80 to $28.17.

HSBC Securities raised Melco Crown to Buy from Hold on Monday. HSBC often takes its views, and does its research from, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia. Do they know something we in the West do not know about a turn in Macau’s endlessly dropping gaming trends? Well, it turns out that Credit Suisse was also in the analyst upgrade game raising its rating to Outperform from Neutral.

Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN) received two key analyst calls. The defense contractor was raised to Overweight from Neutral and the price target was raised to $130 from $121 in the call. Maybe all that global geopolitical risk isn’t making these companies dependent just on the bulky U.S. Department of Defense after all.

Raytheon shares were up almost 1% at $112.45 late in the day and Raytheon has a consensus analyst target price of $120.56 and a 52-week range of $92.96 to $113.36. The company announced that its Pike 40 mm precision-guided munitions from a standard tube grenade launcher provided the expected precision and lethality during flight tests in Texas.

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