Here are the biggest calls on Wall Street on Friday:
Top 5 Upgrades:
UBS upgraded Datadog to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $150, up from $125. The firm's latest industry checks point to "green-shoots" of a potential second half of 2024 spending improvement as well as potential strong medium-term growth for the Azure cloud infrastructure sector.
Jefferies upgraded Ecolab to Buy from Hold with a price target of $310, up from $235. The company's valuation "froth is gone, at least relative to quality peers," and the mean reversion thesis increasingly "looks misguided," the analyst tells investors in a research note.
OTR Global upgraded its view of ServiceNow to Positive from Mixed, stating that checks have found channel partners met or exceeded their Q3 expectations and pipelines and sentiment have become more optimistic.
RBC Capital upgraded Clearwater Paper to Outperform from Sector Perform with a price target of $37, down from $48. Clearwater's "significant reset in valuation" reflects a challenging SBS market that may worsen with a significant capacity addition scheduled for mid-2025, but the firm sees an "asymmetric set-up for the stock" with expectations low and valuation at a trough.
Wells Fargo upgraded Albertsons Companies, Inc. to Overweight from Equal Weight with a price target of $23, up from $22. The firm sees a "compelling opportunity in beaten down" Albertsons.
Top 5 Downgrades:
Needham downgraded Boston Scientific to Hold from Buy without a price target. The firm expects the company's electrophysiology business to "slow significantly" in 2025 and cause its overall revenue growth to slow.
Scotiabank downgraded T-Mobile US to Sector Perform from Outperform with a $236 price target, up from $215.50. The medium term outlook for T-Mobile "continues to be impressive," however, given the significant stock performance in the last months "for what is still inherently a telecom company," Scotiabank believes that short-term upside might be limited at this point.
Morgan Stanley downgraded Global-E Online Ltd. to Equal Weight from Overweight with an unchanged price target of $40. The firm says its expectation for second half of 2024 net new merchant gross merchandise volume strength is now better built into the company's valuation.
Barclays downgraded Zeta Global Holdings Corp. to Equal Weight from Overweight with an unchanged price target of $28. As investors start to look at Zeta's FY25 organic growth/comps and a choice between either improving gross margins or additional revenue growth, the firm thinks the "story gets more challenging from here," the analyst tells investors.
B. Riley downgraded COHERENT to Neutral from Buy with an unchanged price target of $86. The firm cites valuation for the downgrade with the shares up 142% year-to-date.
Top 5 Initiations:
Exane BNP Paribas initiated coverage of Kroger with a Neutral rating and $56 price target. The firm views the grocery space as a "mixed bag" and believes stock selection "is vital."
Cantor Fitzgerald initiated coverage of PureCycle Technologies Inc. with an Overweight rating and $14 price target. The firm believes PureCycle benefits from a "differentiated" technology, first-mover advantage with a large total addressable market, plus an ability to scale up.
Ladenburg initiated coverage of Neonode with a Buy rating and $16.50 price target. Neonode, which has a long history of pioneering technology advancements in the field of human machine interfaces, or HMI, with its two main offerings, zForce and Multisense, is "undergoing a shift in its business model," the analyst tells investors.
Northland initiated coverage of Serve Robotics Inc. with an Outperform rating and $16 price target. As GenAI is changing the landscape for human-to-computer interactions, physical AI is similarly advancing machine-to-physical world interactions, notes the analyst.
Alliance Global Partners initiated coverage of Global Self Storage with a Buy rating and $6.50 price target. The firm says its Buy rating is driven by the company's "strong" balance sheet with low leverage and no near-term debt maturities, availability of capital to fund any future acquisitions, covered common dividend and a yield of 5.8%, and valuation upside.
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