Street Wrap: Today’s Top 15 Upgrades, Downgrades, Initiations

Walmart upgrade, Netflix downgrade, and Roblox initiation among today’s top calls on Wall Street

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Research analysts at Wall Street’s largest banks issue recommendations on whether a stock should be bought, held, or sold. The Fly’s team of financial market experts scours hundreds of research notes daily to uncover the best trading ideas. Check out today’s top analyst calls from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.

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Top 5 Upgrades:

• Tigress Financial upgraded Walmart (WMT) to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $176, up from $170. The retailer "continues expand in all directions to meet the ever-changing retail environment," which, when combined with its higher-margin flywheel growth businesses, will drive further shareholder value creation, the firm argues.
• CBRE upgraded Las Vegas Sands (LVS) to Buy from Hold with a price target of $68, up from $47, after the company sounded "an upbeat tone on the initial recovery in Macau" along with its Q4 earnings report.
• Summit Insights upgraded Seagate Technology (STX) to Buy from Hold. The firm believes most headwinds are now behind Seagate.
• Deutsche Bank upgraded Norfolk Southern (NSC) to Buy from Hold with a price target of $266, down from $273. The company’s average train speeds are up 16% since mid-last year and average dwell is down 7%, and the firm believes this improvement "serves as a relief valve" for capacity that should allow for less supply constraints on growth that defined much of the prior two years.
• Raymond James upgraded FibroGen (FGEN) to Outperform from Market Perform with a $35 price target. The firm thinks the risk/reward for FibroGen ahead if the upcoming data Phase 3 IPF data readout with Pamrevlumab in IPF is compelling.

Top 5 Downgrades:

• Phillip Securities downgraded Netflix (NFLX) to Accumulate from Buy with a price target of $388, up from $346, citing the recent rally in the shares.
• UBS downgraded Pfizer (PFE) to Neutral from Buy with a price target of $47, down from $55. COVID estimates for Pfizer still need to come down and the company’s pipeline upside is minimal in the near- to mid-term, the firm argues.
• Wedbush downgraded Carter’s (CRI) to Neutral from Outperform with a $78 price target. The firm notes the stock has rallied past its price target and sees near-term risks to fundamentals.
• Wells Fargo downgraded Hyatt Hotels (H) to Equal Weight from Overweight with a price target of $113, up from $111. The stock’s rally year-to-date is "well earned," but the outperformance will slow going forward, the firm says.
• Deutsche Bank downgraded Nasdaq (NDAQ) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $60, down from $72, post Q4 results. The firm believes 2023 "will become a considerably more challenging year" for Nasdaq than previously anticipated.

Top 5 Initiations:

• Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang initiated coverage of Roblox (RBLX) with a Perform rating and no price target. While Roblox has proven success taking share in the video game market, the firm sees risks to its long-term growth and ability to gain more lucrative audiences.
• Cantor Fitzgerald initiated coverage of Datadog (DDOG) with an Overweight rating and $95 price target. Datadog’s cloud native observability platform is best positioned to tackle monitoring functions across infrastructure, application performance, digital experience and log management and the recent addition of security and developer experience rounds out the platform, the firm says.
• Citi initiated coverage of Match Group (MTCH) with a Neutral rating and $55 price target. Match has multiple potential catalysts and valuation levels that are as attractive as they’ve been since 2019, but its new initiatives are too early for the firm “to get a feel for."
• Cantor Fitzgerald initiated coverage of JFrog (FROG) with an Overweight rating and $29 price target. JFrog’s strength in artifact/binary/software package management sets up nicely to capture the adjacent areas in DevSecOps, in particular the security and edge/IoT opportunities, the firm argues.
• Guggenheim initiated coverage of Dyne Therapeutics (DYN) with a Buy rating and $33 price target. The firm believes the ACHIEVE trial, with data due in the second half of this year, may demonstrate superior splicing index versus competition at relatively low doses and that the DELIVER trial, whose readout is also expected in the second half may show treatment generating "clinically relevant dystrophin at commercially viable doses."

Keywords: analyst, analyst calls, upgrades, downgrades, initiations, research, wall street