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Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: BlackBerry, BP, Camping World, Deere, GrubHub, KLA-Tencor, Teva, Zions and More

Jon C. Ogg

Published: August 7, 2017 9:10 am

Last Updated: March 20, 2020 11:12 am

Stocks were looking for direction on Monday. Despite the Dow having crossed 22,000 for the first time, we are now more than a week with days of gains, and this is happening during what is supposed to be a bad month for the markets historically. Even with the bull market eight years old now, the common theme that has ruled is that investors keep finding new reasons to buy stocks after every sell-off. Those same investors are also searching for new investing and trading ideas.

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

Additional color and commentary has been added on most of the daily analyst calls. Consensus analyst price target data are from the Thomson Reuters sell-side research service.

These were the top analyst upgrades, downgrades and other research calls from Monday, August 7, 2017.

BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ: BBRY) was started with a Sell rating and assigned an $8.50 price target (versus a $9.44 prior close) at Goldman Sachs. It has a 52-week trading range of $6.65 to $11.74 and a consensus analyst price target of $9.60.

BP PLC (NYSE: BP) was raised to Overweight from Neutral with a $42 price target (versus a $36.33 close) at Piper Jaffray. The American depositary shares have a 52-week range of $32.53 to $38.68 and a consensus price target of $38.29.

Camping World Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CWH) was started with a Buy rating and the price target was set at $40 (versus a $31.98 close) at Monness Crespi & Hardt. Camping World has a 52-week range of $20.45 to $36.60 and has a consensus price target of $36.00.

Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) was already rated as Buy at Goldman Sachs, but the firm added the stock to the prized Conviction Buy list with a $165 price target (versus a $129.75 close). Deere has a 52-week range of $76.73 to $129.95 and a consensus price target of $132.17. Its shares were indicated up 0.65% at $130.60, which would be a new all-time high for the stock.

GrubHub Inc. (NYSE: GRUB) was raised to Overweight from Equal Weight and the price target was raised to $59 from $43 (versus a $52.62 close) at Morgan Stanley. It has a 52-week range of $32.43 to $53.36 and a consensus analyst target of $49.95. Shares were up 9% on Friday and were indicated up another 2.4% at $53.89 on Monday morning.

KLA-Tencor Corp. (NASDAQ: KLAC) was raised to Buy from Hold with a $106 price target (versus an $88.83 close) at Stifel. KLA-Tencor has a 52-week range of $66.88 to $109.59 and a consensus price target of $104.77.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA) was downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight with a $16 price target at Morgan Stanley. Shares closed down 13% at $20.60 on Friday and hit a multiyear low of $20.51. To show how bad things are here, the 52-week high is $55.39.

Zions Bancorp. (NASDAQ: ZION) was downgraded to Underperform from Neutral with a $43 price target (versus a $46.12 close) at Robert W. Baird.

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Other key analyst calls were seen in the following:

Abiomed Inc. (NASDAQ: ABMD) was reiterated as Buy and the price target was raised to $175 from $165 (versus a $151.01 close) at Jefferies. The firm noted that Abiomed is on a path of significant value creation and that it also sees upside well beyond its new $175 price target.

Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) was maintained as Buy but the target price was lowered to $90 at Argus.

Chemours Co. (NYSE: CC) was raised to Neutral from Sell with a $50 target price (versus a $49.31 close) at UBS.

Clean Harbors Inc. (NYSE: CLH) was raised to Equal Weight from Underweight by Barclays.

Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE: ITW) was downgraded to In-Line from Outperform with a $147 price target at Evercore ISI Group.

Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) was raised to Buy from Hold and the price target was raised to $215 from $175 at Canaccord Genuity.

Intrepid Potash Inc. (NYSE: IPI) was downgraded to Sell from Neutral at UBS.

Kaiser Aluminum Corp. (NASDAQ: KALU) was downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform with a $97 price target (versus a $96.77 close) at Cowen.

Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NKTR) was started with a Buy rating and the price target was set at $31 at H.C. Wainwright.

Sabre Corp. (NASDAQ: SABR) was downgraded to Underperform from Neutral with an $18 price objective (versus a $19.73 close) at Merrill Lynch.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) was downgraded to In-Line from Outperform at Evercore ISI. Time Warner shares are now trading within about 5% of the AT&T buyout price and other firms have begun lowering their ratings too as they expect the deal to close before the end of 2017.

The 24/7 Wall St. model that we have used to predict annual moves in the Dow is still pointing to higher share prices a year out from now. That being said, there are some newer risks that investors need to at least give some thought before ignoring them and before just blindly lining up to buy stocks. The Dow was last seen up over 11% so far in 2017, with only six DJIA stocks down so far in 2017 (GS, CVX, VZ, XOM, IBM, GE) and 14 DJIA stocks had gains of more than 10% to 50% (in order low to high: DD, HD, JNJ, MMM, AXP, MSFT, WMT, NKE, UNH, CAT, MCD, V. AAPL, BA). The Dow now has also not had a 200 to 300 point drop since mid-May. The S&P 500 was up about 11% and the Nasdaq 100 was up over 20% year to date. Analysts have almost unilaterally chased up their price targets on Amazon, Boeing, Alphabet, Microsoft, Caterpillar, Facebook, Apple and other key leadership stocks after earnings.

Other issues to consider:

• A note from the manager of the LMTR short selling ETF, who of course is against you stock bulls, sent us a note showing that the good performance of a few large companies has masked the fact that many stocks and many sectors are now bear market territory.
• The Stock Traders Almanac shows that August has become one of the worst months in modern times for stock market bulls.
• S&P showed that energy stocks are at major inflection points historically, but they are not calling for a major recovery.
• Last week’s Investor Sentiment (AAII), which is often used as a reverse-indicator, showed a short-term outlook for stocks as “bearish” was at its lowest level in eight months and the “neutral sentiment” rebounded back above 40% (up 2.5 points to 41.2%), while optimism declined one point to 34.5%.
• And from your daily astrological (or astronomical) market reading, MarketWatch indicated that the astrological and astronomical view pointed to a 95% confidence level to the August 21 total solar eclipse should be followed by a bull market top within 23 months.
• The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow forecast is pointing toward seasonally adjusted annualized real GDP growth to be about 4.0% in the third quarter of 2017, up from an average of 2% so far this year.

And on the monetary policy front, get ready for the start of “normalization” in the Federal Reserve’s $4.4 trillion or more balance sheet maybe as soon as September. Still, it may take a decade to get down to $2.5 trillion or so.