Investing

Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Agilent, Carvana, Cloudera, NCS Multistage, Noble Energy, Shopify, Xilinx and More

Stocks were indicated to open marginally higher on Tuesday despite a deadly terror attack in England. Even with the bull market over eight years old, the reality is that investors have continued to find one reason or another to buy every single major sell-off for more than five years. Those same investors are also looking for new trading and investing ideas.

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

Some additional color and commentary has been added on most of the following daily analyst calls. These were the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and other research calls from Tuesday, May 23, 2017.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) was last seen up 4% at $58.35 on Tuesday after beating earnings. Janney Capital Markets reiterated its Buy rating and raised its target to $65 from $60, after noting that this was eight straight earnings beats with better guidance. Jefferies reiterated its Buy rating and raised its Agilent target price to $66 from $59.

Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA) was down 2.8% at $11.08 on Monday and was indicated up 2% at $11.21 on Tuesday. Carvana was started as Outperform with a $15 target at Baird, and William Blair started it as Outperform. It was started as Outperform with a $17 target at JMP Securities. Merrill Lynch started it with a Buy rating and $25 price objective, and Citigroup started Carvana with a Buy rating and $17 target. It was started as Outperform with a $19 target at Wells Fargo.

Cloudera Inc. (NYSE: CLDR) was up 4.5% at $20.91 on Monday and was indicated up 2.4% at $21.42 on Tuesday ahead of its quiet period expiration. Cloudera was started as Overweight with a $24 target at JPMorgan, and it was started as Buy with a $25 target at Deutsche Bank.

NCS Multistage Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: NCSM) has seen its quiet period come to an end and shares were down almost 0.4% at $24.00 on Monday, versus a $17 IPO price in late April. The stock was started as Neutral with a $24 target at JPMorgan and as Outperform with a $29 target at RBC. It was started as Overweight with a $28 target at Piper Jaffray. Wells Fargo started NCS Multistage as Outperform and gave a $35 target, and Credit Suisse started it as Outperform with a $27 target.

Noble Energy Inc. (NYSE: NBL) was assumed with a Buy rating and assigned a $49 price objective (versus a $31.09 prior closing price) at Merrill Lynch. The firm noted its sale of Marcellus midstream assets last week looking fair and that the total asset sales in 2017 are now almost $2 billion and running twice what management targeted.

Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP) was reinstated as Outperform and assigned a $95 price target (versus an $89.60 close) at Credit Suisse after modeling in a follow-on offering. Shopify was indicated up 1% at $90.50 on Tuesday, in a 52-week range of $26.35 to $95.88 and with a consensus analyst target price of $90.59.

Xilinx Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) was downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Wells Fargo. Xilinx was up 1.27% at $67.52 on Monday but was indicated down 3.7% at $65.00 early Tuesday. Credit Suisse maintained its Outperform rating but noted that the analyst day presentation was moderately disappointing.

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Other key analyst calls were seen in the following:

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