Evergy Inc. (NYSE: EVRG) managed to close up a whole two cents despite Wednesday’s selling pressure, and its shares hit an all-time high of $64.38 as well. Wells Fargo downgraded it to Market Perform from Outperform based on valuation.

Host Hotels & Resorts Inc. (NYSE: HST) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BTIG.

Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE: LEVI) was down 5.6% at $16.25 during Wednesday’s sell-off. Bank of America upgraded it to Buy from Neutral after the shares hit a post-IPO low, but its price objective was cut to $20 from $25 in the call. The post-IPO trading range is $16.00 to $24.50, and the consensus price target is $24.00.

Manhattan Associates Inc. (NASDAQ: MANH) was started as Buy with a $100 target price (versus an $81.80 close) at Rosenblatt.

Paychex Inc. (NASDAQ: PAYX) was downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight and its target price was lowered to $74 from $77 at Morgan Stanley.

PayPal Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) was reiterated as Outperform with a $140 target priced (versus a $106.04 close) at Wedbush. The firm’s call comes after meeting with the company to evaluate recent executive departures, its 2019 guidance reset and thoughts on 2020 guidance.

Pivotal Software Inc. (NASDAQ: PVTL) is reportedly in talks to be acquired by VMware (with Dell and VMware already owning about 65% of the company), but Wedbush maintained its Neutral rating and $15 target price, noting that the acquisition would end the dark days for Pivotal.

Slack Technologies Inc. (NYSE: WORK) was down 1.5% at $30.76 during Wednesday’s selling, but it was indicated up 3.4% at $31.80 on Thursday. Bernstein started it as Market Perform with a $31 target price.

Urban Outfitters Inc. (NASDAQ: URBN) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy and the target price was slashed to $23 from $38 (versus a $20.25 prior close, after a 7.4% drop) at B. Riley. Urban Outfitters was indicated down about 1.5% at $19.95 on Thursday and was going to hit another 52-week low.

Zacks has named GW Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ: GWPH) as its Bull of the Day, saying that this is a success story in cannabis medicine, 20 years in the making, and is now rapidly growing sales. The Bear of the Day is NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP). Zacks noted that warnings of trouble in the cloud/big data industry will now get worse after the Cisco quarterly report.

Wednesday’s top analyst calls included Acorda Therapeutics, Activision Blizzard, Bloom Energy, Care.com, CBS, Deere, Ferrari and many more.

Get Our Free Investment Newsletter

I have read, and agree to the Terms of Use