Check out today's top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.
KEYBANC BOOSTS BED BATH & BEYOND TO OVERWEIGHT: KeyBanc analyst Bradley Thomas upgraded Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) to Overweight from Sector Weight with an $18 price target. The analyst's proprietary data suggests the company's same-store sales trends have been improving. Further, he believes new CEO Mark Tritton and his merchandising background should be a "strong fit" for Bed Bath's needs. In addition, asset sales or divestitures "could happen sooner rather than later" and could be material, while the stock's valuation points to a "sizable upside opportunity" with "relatively bearish sentiment baked in," contended Thomas. The analyst sees "several key reasons" to own shares of Bed Bath & Beyond.
PIPER JAFFRAY UPGRADES LOWE'S: Piper Jaffray analyst Peter Keith upgraded Lowe's (LOW) to Overweight from Neutral with a price target of $130, up from $113. The company's fundamentals look poised for acceleration in the second half of 2019 and 2020, "yet expectations seem modest," Keith told investors in a research note. The analyst's "extensive industry analysis" indicates the housing/home remodel backdrop will strengthen into the first half of 2020. Amidst this backdrop, Keith sees a path for accelerating comp growth and gross margin upside in 2020 for Lowe's. The stock's risk/reward looks "quite favorable," with over 40% upside potential versus 10% downside risk over the next 12 months, contended Keith.
DEUTSCHE BANK CUTS BLOOMIN' BRANDS TO HOLD: Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Mullan downgraded Bloomin' Brands (BLMN) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $21, down from $23. To reflect the "lackluster" casual dining industry data throughout the Q3, the analyst lowered his blended Q3 U.S. same-store-sales estimate for Bloomin' to up 0.6% from up 1.1%, below the current consensus of up 1.2%. The analyst sees a balanced risk/reward profile at current share levels.
BAIRD STARTS STITCH FIX AT OUTPERFORM: Baird analyst Mark Altschwagger initiated coverage of Stitch Fix (SFIX) with an Outperform rating and $28 price target. Altschwager said the company offers a highly differentiated shopping experience, capable of capturing increased share of a highly fragmented apparel & accessories market. He said the future looks bright and the risk/reward is attractive.
BOFA RAISES NVIDIA PRICE TARGET TO $250: BofA Merrill Lynch analyst Vivek Arya raised his price target on Nvidia (NVDA) shares to $250 from $225 as he believes the company's data center growth will soon benefit from "the next-big AI landmark," namely natural language processing, or "conversational AI." The ability to accurately listen, understand, speak and contextualize human speech needs compute requirements 100 times that of today's dominant image/video classifier AI machines, said Arya, who sees Nvidia being "in prime position" to benefit from this shift given its portfolio of hardware and software and its developer ecosystem. Arya keeps a Buy rating on Nvidia, which he continues to identify as his top large-cap pick.
