31 Jan Top analyst calls on Wall Street include Apple & Alphabet
Here are Tuesday’s biggest calls on Wall Street: Barclays reiterates Apple as equal weight Barclays said it sees a miss when the Apple reports earnings Thursday. “What started out as production-driven cuts have moved to demand weakness across product categories. We are also concerned by decelerating Services growth. At a 20% premium to the S & P 500, we see the stock as fairly valued at best.” Morgan Stanley reiterates Lucid Group as underweight Morgan Stanley said the fundamental outlook for the electric vehicle company is “deteriorating.” “Like many start-up EV names, Lucid must overcome execution headwinds in a year where we will see severe EV deflation.” Atlantic Equities downgrades Bank of America to neutral from overweight Atlantic Equities said it’s concerned about slowing growth for the banking giant. “Downgrading BAC to Neutral. With NII (net interest income) upside now largely priced in for 2023, attention is starting to turn to potential NIM (net interest margin) decline in 2024 and the revenue headwind that presents. Read more about this call here. Deutsche Bank reiterates Disney as buy Deutsche Bank said it’s standing by shares of Disney heading into earnings on Feb. 8. “We don’t expect any major strategic shifts, as we see the current strategy as Bob Iger’s strategy, it just hasn’t been executed the way Bob Iger would have/will execute it.” CFRA downgrades Dollar Tree to sell from hold CFRA said it sees too many headwinds for the discount retailer. “We believe FY 24 will be a challenging year for DLTR due to 1) continued inflationary pressures (particularly in labor and store overhead); 2) the continued negative sales mix shift to lower-margin consumable products; 3) store, labor, and price investments in Family Dollar.” Bank of America reiterates Alphabet as buy Bank of America said Alphabet continues to pull the right “cost levers in a tough environment.” “We see Alphabet as a more defensive stock in group in 2023 with more relative earnings stability given utility of search, expense flexibility, healthy margins that will minimize cash flow concerns, and opportunity to support stock with buybacks.” Citi opens a positive catalyst watch on Lam Research Citi added a positive catalyst watch on the semiconductor company and said it expects the stock to outperform. “We are opening a positive catalyst watch on Buy rated LRCX and expect the stock to outperform the group after ~1300 bps relative underperformance in the last six months on weak memory end demand and capex cut concerns.” UBS downgrades Nokia to neutral from buy UBS said it sees a “challenging” market ahead for Nokia . “As we look into 2023 and beyond following recent results, we take the view that revenue/EBIT growth will normalise due to peaking 5G investment in the US and increasing pressure on costs.” Bank of America upgrades FleetCor to buy from neutral Bank of America said in its upgrade of the fuel card payment company that FleetCor is addressing challenges “head on.” “We upgrade FleetCor to Buy (from Neutral) and increase our PO to $240 based on a 14x PE multiple to our 2023 EPS estimate.” BTIG upgrades New Fortress Energy to buy from neutral BTIG said it sees trends improving for the clean energy company. ” NFE has had a tough start to the year down ~11% YTD on the back of the collapse in natural gas prices which are down ~30% in the US and Europe. Warmer weather in Europe has helped keep European gas storage levels at a five-year-high heading into February.” Macquarie downgrades Paramount to underperform from neutral Macquarie said it’s concerned about the company’s ad exposure. “We downgrade PARA from Neutral to Underperform. Ad exposure is highest in the peer group at 35% of sales, and ad revenues will likely be firmly negative in 4Q and ’23.” Mizuho reiterates Uber as buy Mizuho said it’s “constructive” on Uber shares heading into earnings on Feb. 8. “With easier comps into 1Q23 from Omicron last year, we believe setup is positive against expectations.” Deutsche Bank reiterates PayPal as buy Deutsche said it’s staying bullish heading into PayPal earnings in early February. “While we remain confident in PYPL’s ability to manage costs and grow EPS in FY23, we will continue to monitor macro headwinds facing the overall eComm market along with share shifts. We are lowering our TP to $100 due to lower peer group valuations.” Wells Fargo reiterates Ford as underweight Wells said it sees the automaker cutting electric vehicle prices even further. “Ford responds to TSLA’s recent price cuts by slashing pricing on the Ford Mach E. The moves highlighted the industry price concerns we discussed in Did TSLA Start a Price War? & Pricing Party Over. We expect more EV price cuts to follow.” BMO reiterates Advanced Micro Devices as outperform BMO said it’s standing by shares of the company heading into earnings on Tuesday afternoon. “We rate shares of AMD Outperform. Plenty of questions have been raised with respect to the company’s upcoming earnings, especially in light of Intel’s report last week, and we had the following thoughts.” Goldman Sachs reiterates SolarEdge and First Solar as buy Goldman said it’s staying bullish on shares of SolarEdge and First Solar. “At the same time, we see significant margin recovery stories in focus and poised to beat-and-raise near-term and to that end, we highlight upside in SEDG and ARRY – both of which we expect to beat on the back of inflecting gross margins – while we also view FSLR as likely to further reinforce its status as an IRA winner on the back of robust 2023 guidance.” Lightshed initiates Meta as buy Lightshed said in its initiation of Meta that “revenue and earnings growth are set to meaningfully outperform.” “While META has bounced nicely off its lows ( Meta is not alone in this ), the key driver for our BUY rating now is the belief that revenue and earnings growth are set to meaningfully outperform investor expectations in 2024 and 2025.”