Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: 3D Systems, Apple, Applied Materials, Chipotle, CSX, PepsiCo, Red Hat and More

Investing

Published: April 14, 2016 8:55 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 10:46 am

Stocks hit 2016 highs on Wednesday, and Thursday’s session is looking for direction, with futures fighting over being slightly positive and slightly down. It seems that investors have decided to revert back to the trend of the prior four years of buying pullbacks.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning of the week to find new investing and trading ideas for our readers. Some of these analyst reports cover stocks to buy, while others cover stocks to sell or avoid.

These are the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations seen on Thursday morning:

3D Systems Corp. (NYSE: DDD) was raised to Buy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, all the way up from Underperform. The firm raised its price objective by over 100% — to $26 from $11 — noting that the CEO announcement was a much needed catalyst to drive 3D’s turnaround through new strategy, alignment of cost structure and portfolio optimization. 3D Systems has a consensus analyst price target of $12.27 and a 52-week trading range of $6.00 to $32.88.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) was maintained as Buy with a $120 price target at UBS, but the firm noted many existential threats, like Facebook’s messenger bots, smartphone upgrade fatigue and migration/churn, and roadblocks for new phones in China. Apple has a consensus price target of $133.92 and a 52-week range of $92.00 to $134.54.