Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
TIME TO BUY ZOOM, JPMORGAN SAYS: JPMorgan analyst Sterling Auty upgraded Zoom Video Communications (ZM) to Overweight from Neutral with an unchanged price target of $385. The stock is down over 33% since December 9, 2020 as investors have factored in the growth slowdown post the pandemic tailwinds, Auty tells investors in a research note. He believes Zoom's growth will bottom in Q4 and that the market has priced that into the current stock price, creating a "more attractive" risk/reward profile. Auty expects Zoom to be the "other big winner" in the enterprise unified communications as a service market along with Microsoft Teams.
SELL MODERNA: Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Papadakis initiated coverage of Moderna (MRNA) with a Sell rating and $250 price target. The company would need to either sustain Covid vaccine revenues in the double-digit billions and/or supplant them with revenue streams of similar magnitude long-term in order to justify the current valuation, "let alone provide meaningful upside," Papadakis tells investors in a research note. He believes Moderna's valuation "looks detached from a problematic assessment of reality."
INTEL GETS RAFT OF DOWNGRADES AFTER EARNINGS: Intel (INTC) was downgraded by no less than three Wall Street firms and targets were cut at many others after the company's quarterly report last night.
Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh downgraded Intel to Neutral from Buy with a price target of $55, down from $70. The company on its earnings call announced a significant 100% ramp in foundry investment, resetting gross margins lower over next couple of years, Rakesh tells investors in a research note. The analyst now believes Intel's "capital-intensive" foundry shift "adds uncertainty to its likelihood of catching up to leading-edge."
UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri downgraded Intel to Neutral from Buy with a price target of $58, down from $73. The company's "unexpected" disclosure around the new long-term financial model that includes capex and margin trajectory pushes out Intel's free cash flow recovery, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Arcuri adds however that while the 51-53% gross margin targets for the next 2-3 years is not great, it is also not terrible given the range that some investors had feared.
Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore downgraded Intel to Equal Weight from Overweight with a price target of $55, down from $67. While he thinks the just-passed quarter "was fine" and the product pipeline is "strong," Moore argues that increased capital spending "requires underwriting a growth forecast that seems challenging." He has consistently said that over $25B in capital spending "would be problematic for us," said Moore, who contends that guidance for $25B-28B "and higher in future years" puts the burden on double digit growth in 2023 and beyond.
SUMMIT SAYS BUY NVIDIA: Summit Insights analyst Kinngai Chan double upgraded Nvidia to Buy from Sell after channel checks indicated a "solid finish" to the company's October quarter driven by upside demand in the cryptocurrency mining and the gaming markets. Nvidia's sales into the crypto-mining market have rebounded back to more than $1B per quarter after the recent crash in May and June, Chan tells investors in a research note. As such, the analyst believes Nvidia is "poised for upsides" in the October and the January quarters.
Zoom Video
+10.34 (+3.76%)
Moderna
-12.73 (-3.75%)
Intel
-6.185 (-11.04%)
Nvidia
+1.19 (+0.52%)