Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
UNION PACIFIC UPGRADED TO BUY AT DEUTSCHE BANK: Deutsche Bank analyst Amit Mehrotra upgraded Union Pacific (UNP) to Buy from Hold and raised his price target for the shares to $175 from $159. Following several years of "weak" cost control, Union Pacific is now positioned for at least $3B in profit improvement, Mehrotra told investors in a research note. He believes this translates to over 1,000 basis points of EBIT margin improvement and $35B of additional equity value. Further, after speaking to industry stakeholders, Mehrotra thinks Union Pacific management is under "significant pressure to achieve cost targets."
LONG TIME BEAR UPGRADES SKYWORKS TO EQUAL WEIGHT: Morgan Stanley analyst Craig Hettenbach upgraded Skyworks (SWKS) to Equal Weight from Underweight, noting that negative revisions have brought Street estimates closer to his own view. While he still sees lingering risks in the iPhone supply chain and smartphones more broadly, Hettenbach believes those risks are more appropriately reflected following the meaningful underperformance in the stock, he told investors. The analyst, who noted that he has been Underweight Skyworks for over two years, kept a $76 price target on the stock.
CME GROUP CUT TO NEUTRAL, INITIATED AT NEUTRAL: UBS analyst Alex Kramm downgraded CME Group (CME) to Neutral from Buy while raising his price target for the shares to $204 from $185. He believes the current valuation already reflects a higher volatility environment. With the shares up over 30% year-to-date and at the high end of its historical range with the S&P 500, the analyst said he "cannot ignore tough comps in 2019 and the potential for the NEX integration to create some noise in the near term." As such, he said he prefers waiting for better entry point into CME shares. Additionally, this morning Atlantic Equities analyst Nadja Heini initiated CME Group with a Neutral rating and $200 price target. In late morning trading, CME Group shares are down 2.2% to $189.87.
MIZUHO SAYS GPU PRICING A BIG POSITIVE FOR AMD, NVIDIA: Graphics processing unit pricing is starting to rebound, which is a "big positive" for AMD (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA), Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh told investors in a research note. The analyst found evidence that the prices of NVDA 1080 and AMD Radeon have started to rebound in the last two weeks. This is the first price rebound since the protracted GPU price declines since the "Crypto Crazed Pricing Peak" in February of 2018, according to Rakesh. He believes GPU pricing is starting to turn up 10%-15% from the September lows, which points to a faster normalizing of channel inventories and demand elasticity.
JEFFERIES SAYS POTENTIAL VALUE OF AMAZON WEB SERVICES $350B: The momentum of Amazon's (AMZN) Amazon Web Services is evident with three days still left in the annual re:Invent Cloud conference, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said in a research note. Enterprise customers are making bigger commitments earlier with AWS, increasing partner deal sizes 3.5 times, added the analyst. He forecasts AWS revenue to hit $71B by 2020, potentially worth $350B versus Amazon's current market capitalization of $800B. Thill believes AWA is competing well against Oracle (ORCL) and Microsoft (MSFT). The analyst kept a Buy rating on Amazon with a $2,300 price target. In late morning trading, share of Amazon are higher by over 1.5% to $1,607.59.
