These reports, excerpted and edited by Barron's, were issued recently by investment and research firms. The reports are a sampling of analysts' thinking; they should not be considered the views or recommendations of Barron's. Some of the reports' issuers have provided, or hope to provide, investment-banking or other services to the companies being analyzed.
Goldman Sachs Group -- GS-NYSE Market Perform -- $1,140 on July 14 by Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Second-quarter results demonstrated yet again the leading position that Goldman Sachs Group has in its core businesses (M&A/trading) with a second consecutive 20%-plus return on tangible common equity quarter, and we see the firm continuing to operate above its medium-term targets in 2026-27.
Increasing exposure to durable/repeatable revenue is an ongoing strategy/opportunity with positive valuation implications for Goldman, and to this point, 22% of second-quarter 2026 revenue was from fixed income, currencies, and commodities/equity financing, and another 23% of same-quarter revenue was from asset and wealth management.
Our revised valuation reflects higher valuation multiples, though we remain Market Perform, based on Goldman's notable premium valuation. Price target: $1,130.
Mattel -- MAT-Nasdaq Buy -- $13.33 on July 13 by UBS Mattel's core investment case is not about just toys. The recession-resilient toy industry remains a growth industry with some structural pressures like declining birthrates, but with offsetting factors such as the rise of kidults, which is expanding the addressable market.
Mattel actually owns the most concentrated portfolios of evergreen, multigenerational family entertainment intellectual property. Brands forged over decades with embedded global fandom, deep cultural affinity, and the kind of franchise-grade recognition that the broader entertainment industry or gaming industry are spending billions of dollars to manufacture from scratch.
The gap between what Mattel's portfolio of brand equity is worth versus what the market currently ascribes to it as a toy manufacturer remains, in our view, one of the most compelling valuation disconnects in the consumer and entertainment space today. Price target: $28.
Cadence Design Systems -- CDNS-Nasdaq Buy -- $376.80 on July 15 by Benchmark Equity Research We are initiating coverage of Cadence Design Systems with a Buy rating and $450 price target. We believe that electronic design automation/intellectual property/simulation tool companies like Cadence possess all the traits that investors want. They are high-growth, high-margin companies. The EDA industry operates under a duopoly market structure with high barriers to entry. These tools are very consequential to advancements in semiconductor and electronics systems design, and related, they exert strong pricing power. More specifically, they are very consequential to the types of silicon and rack-scale solutions powering today's data centers.
Last, AI for design tools, as well as new accelerated compute architectures, are poised to drive a step-function increase in productivity that these tools deliver to semiconductor, software, and electronic systems developers.
DraftKings -- DKNG-Nasdaq Outperform -- $26.45 on July 13 by Oppenheimer Sentiment is mixed with short interest at a four-year high on potential guidance cut from higher Predictions spending and unattainable fourth-quarter inflection following June Holds (Knicks/World Cup $60 million to $70 million combined headwind). Bulls counter with encouraging June Predictions ramp that could scale to four million to five million users by year end. We see that the August app update ramping users/volume into Labor Day, which, combined with better understanding of market making, could improve sentiment in a heightened marketing environment. Price target: $35.
Travel + Leisure -- TNL-NYSE Outperform -- $73.23 on July 15 by Mizuho Travel + Leisure announced the acquisition of Yes& Vacations and, separately, a definitive agreement to acquire Spinnaker Resorts....Together, the transactions add more than 100,000 owners and 23 resorts. The deal expands Travel + Leisure's presence into two very important (and hard to build) destinations, Maui and Hilton Head....
On a full-year basis, inclusive of identified synergies, these acquisitions are expected to contribute about $50 million of adjusted Ebitda. However, we think the synergy assumption is conservative and could be meaningfully higher over time.
For 2027, we think $120 million to $150 million in incremental contract sales is reasonable. Price target: $105.
CrowdStrike -- CRWD-Nasdaq Buy -- $209 on July 15 by BTIG During our field checks over the past few weeks, we were able to pick up some compelling data points on CrowdStrike from six industry contacts. In addition, we participated in a pre-quiet-period call with investor relations last week.
All in, our work points toward a positive demand environment, with AI creating incremental tailwinds for CrowdStrike's core endpoint security offering. In addition, we picked up positive feedback on emerging product initiatives -- most notably Next Gen SIEM [security information and event management] as well as exposure management and AI detection and response.
While two weeks remain in the fiscal second quarter, we came away with increased confidence in our outlook. In an upside scenario, we think that CrowdStrike could post annual recurring revenue growth of 25% in the fiscal second quarter versus the Street at 24.4%. We increased our price target to $237.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 17, 2026 16:03 ET (20:03 GMT)
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