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.
AutoZone -- AZO-NYSE Buy -- $2,894.73 on Sept. 22 by TD Cowen We are encouraged by AutoZone's better fourth-quarter exit rate and sustained momentum early in the first quarter. Same-stock-keeping-unit inflation in fiscal-year 2027 should be hotter than initially expected with the focus on do-it-yourself elasticity and opportunity to strengthen transaction trends, while "do it for me" remains solid and growing share. AutoZone is likely to remain a battleground stock until domestic comps improve, but we like the M-T setup and modest valuation....
We maintain our Buy rating but lower our price target to $3,400 on 17.5 times our estimated fiscal-2028 earnings per share of $193.09.
Meta Platforms -- META-Nasdaq Hold -- $741.25 on Sept. 22 by StoneX Research Meta Platform's recent 11% move can be attributed to continued strong downloads of Muse, its largely free artificial-intelligence agent service.... Muse is a credible AI agent and the right competitive product direction for Meta's consumer and small-business base. However, we view its launch more as reducing product-demand risk, not resolving the AI-spending/return-on-invested-capital debate....
The required proof points remain day-30 retention, task frequency and completion, paid conversion, average revenue per user, compute cost per successful task, and whether Muse requires incremental capital expenditure beyond the existing plan. We reiterate our Hold rating.
UiPath -- PATH-NYSE Perform -- $13.25 on Sept. 23 by Oppenheimer At the recent analyst meeting in Las Vegas, UiPath's management team provided an upbeat set of presentations and good financials transparency, including $250 million-plus in annual recurring revenue in the fiscal second quarter. Overall, the meeting was positive and enhanced our understanding of the technology vision, go-to-market changes with a focus on verticalization, platform expansion drivers, operating leverage, and competitive differentiation. On balance, the fiscal-year 2028 financial disclosures were limited.
Bottom Line: We are positive on UiPath's evolution from a robotic process automation provider into a leading end-to-end agentic automation and business orchestration platform. In our view, UiPath Maestro's ability to coordinate AI agents, robots, applications, and human decision-making, combined with UiPath's push into productized vertical solutions, should expand the company into larger, end-to-end transformation opportunities. The next catalyst will be showing evidence that growing platform adoption can translate into sustained business acceleration.
Ciena -- CIEN-NYSE Outperform -- $347.65 on Sept. 21 by Evercore ISI We are upgrading Ciena to Outperform and raising our target to $550 (prior $375), as we see Ciena as an attractive way to gain exposure to the optical networking space that is quickly emerging as a critical bottleneck in the AI buildout. We think that Ciena can sustain more than 30% sales and more than 35% EPS growth, enabling it to achieve, if not surpass, $25-plus EPS by fiscal 2029.
QuickLogic -- QUIK-Nasdaq Buy $10.72 on Sept. 21 by Needham QuickLogic announced the departure of its chief financial officer, Elias Nader, effective on Sept. 18. The company has appointed James Sullivan as senior vice president and CFO, effective on Oct. 5. Sullivan brings over 20 years of public company CFO experience, spanning companies such as Peraso, MoSys, Apptera, and 8x8. We view Sullivan as a long-term strategic fit for the company, as he brings key experience across monetizing intellectual property and assets, along with executing on several licensing agreements. In connection with the CFO transition, the company reiterated its third-quarter 2026 guidance, expecting revenue of $5.5 million, gross margin of 47%, and operating expenses of $3.6 million, all at the midpoint. We maintain our target price of $20, based on an enterprise value equal to about 10 times our calendar-year 2028 revenue estimate.
EQT -- EQT-NYSE Buy -- $50.13 on Sept. 21 by Texas Capital Securities We expect EQT's third-quarter 2026 update to highlight disciplined management of near-term Appalachian pricing weakness while reinforcing an increasingly attractive setup for long-term demand growth. We are updating our estimates primarily to reflect tactical third-quarter 2026 curtailments and weaker near-term Appalachian pricing.
With the balance sheet approaching a key inflection point and premium-market connectivity expanding, we believe that EQT is positioning itself for stronger free cash flow and greater flexibility to return capital. Target price: $67.
Autodesk -- ADSK-Nasdaq Buy -- $216.95 on Sept. 18 by Guggenheim We attended Autodesk University on Sept. 15-17 and came away with our view intact: The company retains a durable moat against AI obsolescence, and is embracing AI as it navigates its customers across this paradigm shift....
AU reinforced our view that Autodesk's value is embedded not just in the tools used to create designs, but in the proprietary project context, workflows, and data accumulated around them. Target price: $283.
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