DoorDash upgraded, Airbnb downgraded: Wall Street’s top analyst calls

The most talked about and market moving research calls around Wall Street are now in one place. Here are today’s research calls that investors need to know, as compiled by The Fly.

Top 5 Upgrades:

• MoffettNathanson upgraded DoorDash (DASH) to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $164, up from $118. The impetus behind the firm’s previous DoorDash downgrade, student loan risks, has failed to materialize.
• BofA upgraded Nike (NKE) to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $113, up from $110. Estimates are bottoming and “finally look achievable,” contends the firm, which also notes that the stock’s multiple has compressed.
• Barclays upgraded Atlassian (TEAM) to Overweight from Equal Weight with a price target of $275, up from $235. The firm says a “healthier” growth profile with more enterprise customers on Atlassian’s cloud solutions warrants a higher multiple for the shares given improved revenue “durability.”
• Evercore ISI upgraded Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) to Outperform from In Line with a $438 price target after the “surprise move” to acquire Alpine Immune Sciences (ALPN) for $65 per share or $4.9B in cash.
• UBS upgraded Gartner (IT) to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $550, up from $484. The firm believes the company’s contract value growth is likely to trough in Q1, re-accelerate in Q2, and exit the year growing double digits.

Top 5 Downgrades:

• Needham downgraded Airbnb (ABNB) to Hold from Buy without a price target. The firm believes the market has an overly optimistic view on Airbnb’s potential to leverage artificial intelligence to disrupt the global online travel agency industry, and sees potential challenges in the company generating the global scale necessary to impact estimates, specifically the potential for price competition with incumbents and need to unlock hotels that likely see Airbnb as an existential threat.
• Citi downgraded Robinhood (HOOD) to Sell from Neutral with a price target of $16, up from $13. Given the increase in stock price, Citi believes Robinhood’s valuation levels “have disconnected from the fundamental outlook.”
• JPMorgan downgraded Altice USA (ATUS) to Underweight from Neutral without a price target. The firm cites the company’s “lengthy” turnaround story as broadband momentum remains weak, persisting elevated competition, elevated leverage profile and limited cash flow generation, and low likelihood of an acquisition near-term for the downgrade.
• Wolfe Research downgraded Saia (SAIA) to Peer Perform from Outperform without a price target. The firm cites valuation for the downgrade following the stock’s material outperformance.
• JPMorgan downgraded Hamilton Lane (HLNE) to Neutral from Overweight with an unchanged price target of $115. Though the firm sees upside still in the shares longer term and remains positive on the company, it sees tactical investment opportunities more attractive elsewhere in the near-term.

Top 5 Initiations:

• JPMorgan reinstated coverage of Disney (DIS) with an Overweight rating and price target of $140, up from $120, following a period of restriction. While cautious on the media landscape due to pay TV subscriber losses and advertising headwinds, Disney is the firm’s favorite in the group due to the company’s “unique” content, improving streaming financials, and parks operation “which provides an avenue to attractively deploy capital.”
• Benchmark initiated coverage of Airbnb (ABNB) with a Buy rating and $190 price target. Even as competition increases in alternative accommodations within the broader travel market, research shows that Airbnb has retained its number one position with consumers, hosts, and unaffiliated travel experts, the firm tells investors in a research note.
• KeyBanc initiated coverage of Snowflake (SNOW) with an Overweight rating and $185 price target. The firm is positive on Snowflake’s “durable” 20% growth, driven by continued legacy migrations, improving public cloud migration trends, a significantly expanding product portfolio, and the use of the company’s “easy-to-use” governed platform for developing and hosting generative artificial intelligence workloads.
• Bernstein initiated coverage of Kenvue (KVUE) with an Underperform rating and $18 price target. Kenvue – the former Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) Consumer Health business – has consistently lost market share across the majority of its business for the past several years, says the firm, which expects FY24 investment to prove “inadequate” and struggles to see “a path to share stabilization absent significant further re-investment.”
• TD Cowen initiated coverage of MasterCard (MA) with a Buy rating and $545 price target. The firm says MasterCard offers an “attractive high-growth, high-margin business poised to deliver outsized expansion” over the medium- to long-term. TD Cowen also started coverage of Visa (V) with a Buy rating and $320 price target, saying the company has a “durable, high-margin business built on the leading scale of its global payments networks” within a $45 trillion consumer spend market that retains “healthy runway” for digital payments penetration.