Robinhood Markets has been added to Mizuho Securities' "top picks" for July, while Micron Technology is the firm's top stock among the highflying chip names.
Robinhood stock gained 9.4% to $118.98 on Thursday, trading near the top of S&P 500 on the back of rising Bitcoin prices.
Mizuho released its top picks list for July on Thursday and Robinhood stock was among the new top stock names for the month. The other new additions include biopharma and medical names EyePoint, Erasca, and Encompass Health. Global agricultural technology stock Corteva rounded out the additions to the list.
Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev wrote Thursday that the reason for Robinhood stock's top pick designation is that the brokerage firm has "captured the zeitgeist of a generation" and that it continues to execute on new products.
Mizuho has an Outperform rating and a $115 price target on Robinhood stock. Shares have closed higher in four of the past five trading days but have traded mostly sideways this year, gaining less than 1%.
The firm believes key catalysts for the stock include international expansion, the popularity of prediction markets, and the ability to trade futures and "event contracts."
"Investors have been concerned historically with HOOD's user graduation risk (i.e. leaving HOOD for a financial advisor)," Dolev wrote. "We believe that the company has done an impressive job mitigating these factors through the acquisition of TradePMR (financial advisor marketplace) as well as its continued strong execution on its product roadmap of comprehensive financial services."
Other standouts from the Mizuho top pick list include Micron in its semiconductor & automotive tech sector and Oracle in the software sector.
Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh has an Outperform rating on Micron stock with a $1,375 price target. Micron stock gained 242% in the second quarter, its strongest ever quarterly performance even as shares sank following solid third-quarter earnings.
Rakesh noted that memory demand is expected to remain strong through 2027 and that Micron will remain a "key winner" in the sector.
"We see MU and other key memory suppliers all seeing strong near-term tailwinds, driven mostly by AI demand," Rakesh wrote.
When it comes to Oracle, Mizuho analyst Siti Panigrahi has an Outperform rating on the shares with a $320 price target. Oracle stock rose 1.8% to $145.12 on Thursday, after ending Wednesday down 2.8% at $142.50.
While software stocks have mostly been battered this year on the investor thesis that artificial intelligence will hit some software offerings, Mizuho based its top pick choice for Oracle around it being able to harness the AI opportunity.
"Oracle's end to end AI stack across database, infrastructure, and applications positions it as a key long-term beneficiary of AI adoption, " Panigrahi wrote.
Mizuho forecasts that AI revenue will drive annual operating income growth of 34% through fiscal 2030. However, the firm noted that Oracle will likely need to raise additional capital to fund its AI spending.
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