At a recent price of around $245.60, the potential gain on PayPal stock is 4.2% at the consensus price target of $56.07. At the high price target of $350, the potential upside is 42.5%. The stock is already richly valued, trading at around 65 times expected 2020 earnings and 52 times expected 2021 EPS. The stock’s 52-week range is $82.07 to $254.39. PayPal does not pay a dividend.

Qualcomm

Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) also reports late Wednesday, after posting a share price gain of 77% last year and adding 6.6% so far in 2021. Like one of its largest customers, Qualcomm has gotten a big boost from smartphone users upgrading to 5G-compatible phones.

Even though that customer (Apple) is working on its own modem chip to replace Qualcomm’s, analysts at Canaccord Genuity expect the chipmaker to be as much as six generations ahead of Apple by the time the iPhone maker has its first 5G modem chip out the door. Analysts at Robert Baird initiated coverage of Qualcomm in early January with an Outperform rating and a $200 price target, the highest yet for the chipmaker.

Analysts expect Qualcomm to report first fiscal quarter 2021 EPS of $2.10, more than double EPS in the same period last year, and sales of $8.26 billion, a jump of more than 63%. For the 2021 fiscal year, analysts estimate EPS to total $7.18 (up 71%) on sales of $30.4 billion (up more than 40%).

With shares trading at around $163, the stock is trading at about 23 times expected 2021 EPS and 20 times expected 2022 EPS. Based on the consensus price target of $169.08, Qualcomm stock has a potential upside of around 3.5%, but based on the high price target the potential upside is more than 18%. Qualcomm pays a dividend yield of 1.61%.

Nokia

Last year, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) shares added more than 5%, but the story with this stock is the gain it has produced so far in 2021. By last Thursday, the stock had posted a gain of more than 67% for January. That has fallen back to around 15% as of late Tuesday morning.

Nokia was one of those stocks picked by Robinhood investors to teach short sellers a lesson, but the lesson came undone as quickly as it started. Robinhood’s Friday trading halt all but killed the effort to inflict a short squeeze. It would have been difficult in any event, since just 1.2% of Nokia’s total float is shorted.