Top Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades: Amazon, American Air, Amex, Beyond Meat, Caterpillar, Clorox, eBay, Gilead, Twitter, Verizon, Wayfair and More

Investing

Published: April 27, 2020 9:08 am

Last Updated: April 27, 2020 9:15 am

Stocks closed up on Friday, for the second Friday in a row, stoking hopes that investors are not so spooked about waves of bad news affecting their finances. S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrials futures were up about 0.8% on Monday morning.

After the 11-year raging bull market rapidly turned into a bear market and recession, many investors were caught off guard in March and were equally caught off guard with the market having recovered half of its losses in April. This is when investors should be looking for new ideas to decide how to be positioned for the rest of 2020.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each day of the week. Our goal is to find some of those new ideas for long-term investors and short-term traders alike. Some analyst reports cover stocks to buy, and others cover stocks to sell or avoid. Consensus analyst target prices are from Refinitiv.

Many upgrades, downgrades, reiterations and initiations are still being seen ahead of and after key earnings reports. A dominant trend after the market drop and in the recovery is that analysts have been lowering their target prices in most stocks, even if they are maintaining their prior official ratings. Still, there remain many traditional upgrades and reiterations as if things were still close to normal. Remember that no single analyst report should be used as a sole basis for any buying or selling decision.

These are the top analyst calls tracked from Monday, April 27, 2020.

Abiomed Inc. (NASDAQ: ABMD) was downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at SVB Leerink.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) was reiterated as Buy and its price target was raised to $2,770 from $2,450 (versus a $2,410.22 prior close) at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. The firm noted that the COVID-19 outbreak was helping to catalyze faster market share gains to set it as the king of e-commerce.

American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL) was reiterated as Sell and its price target was cut to $10 from $13 (versus a $10.31 close) at Citigroup.

American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) was maintained as Overweight but its price target was lowered to $113 from $117 at Morgan Stanley.

Arch Coal Inc. (NYSE: ARCH) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Jefferies.

AutoNation Inc. (NYSE: AN) was raised to Buy from Neutral with a $40 price target at Northcoast Research. Shares closed up over 8% at $33.63 on Friday, with a $35.71 consensus price target.

Beyond Meat Inc. (NASDAQ: BYND) was downgraded to Sell from Neutral and its price target was lowered to $73 from $90 at UBS. Shares closed up 9% at $108.78 ahead of the call, with an $80.38 prior consensus price target.

Blackstone Group Inc. (NYSE: BX) was reiterated as Overweight and the price target was raised to $64 from $62 (versus a $48.43 close) art Morgan Stanley. It had a $54.29 prior consensus price target.

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) was downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight with a $93 price target at Morgan Stanley. Shares closed up 1% at $114.04 ahead of the call, with a $123.58 consensus price target.

Clorox Co. (NYSE: CLX) was maintained as Underweight but its price target was raised to $173 from $169 (versus a $190.65 close) at Morgan Stanley.

Colgate-Palmolive Co. (NYSE: CL) was reiterated as Overweight and its price target was raised to $78 from $72 (versus a $71.40 close) at Morgan Stanley.

Curo Group Holdings Corp. (NYSE: CURO) was named as the Bull of the Day at Zacks, which said that this stock has been rallying into its earnings report. Shares most recently closed at $6.57 and have a consensus price target of $16.00.

Datadog Inc. (NASDAQ: DDOG) was maintained as Buy but its price target was cut to $58 from $65 (versus a $41.81 close) at Needham.