Here are Friday’s biggest calls on Wall Street. Bank of America downgrades Deutsche Bank to underperform from neutral Bank of America said it sees waning profitability for the European banking giant. “We see Deutsche Bank struggling to improve profitability as growth is heavily volume reliant, consuming cost and capital resources.” Read more about this call here. KBW upgrades Apollo Global to outperform from market perform KBW said the sell-off in shares of the private equity firm is overdone. “Overall, APO has a diverse earnings stream, and we expect recent investments across the franchise to position APO to deliver significant growth over the coming years.” Deutsche Bank adds a catalyst buy idea on Frontier Deutsche Bank said it sees a “significant earnings recovery” for the discount airline. “With ULCC shares down 15%, we think that the stock is overreacting to the company’s March quarter outlook which calls for a larger loss per share than the Street had been forecasting.” Jefferies reiterates Walmart as buy Jefferies said it is standing by its buy rating on the stock heading into earnings later this month. “We believe WMT is likely to guide FY’24 conservatively given the uncertainty in retail.” Guggenheim reiterates Target as buy Guggenheim says it’s standing by shares of the e-commerce giant heading into earnings later this month. “We believe Target’s comps will continue to recover to 4% and operating margin will migrate back to 6% for 2024, and are establishing a 2024 EPS estimate of $10.95.” Oppenheimer reiterates Roku as outperform Oppenheimer said it’s standing by its outperform rating on shares of Roku. “We estimate Platform revenue -2% y/y vs. Street’s -4% y/y as we believe mgmt. was likely conservative in 4Q guidance with reported media companies ad trends down MSD (mid single digits) in 4Q.” Morgan Stanley reiterates Tesla as overweight Morgan Stanley said “further upside from here will require a more substantial narrative change” for Tesla shares. “While we reiterate the Overweight rating on Tesla shares, we believe the window of opportunity on ‘valuation’ has closed.” Evercore ISI reiterates Tesla as in line Evercore raised its price target on the stock to $165 per share from $140 and said all eyes are on the company’s March 1st analyst day. “23 could not be off to a much better start for TSLA as the stock has now rallied past $200 again on a ‘low quality’ Q1 beat.” Bank of America upgrades International Flavors to neutral from underperform Bank of America upgraded the company mainly on valuation. ” IFF reported 4Q EBITDA of $441mn vs the consensus of $504mn. … .With shares now at that 18x level and trading at 10x EPS turn discount to peers, we see valuation as more accurately reflecting the challenges. With 16% potential upside to our new PO, we upgrade to Neutral.” Bank of America initiates Freyr Battery as buy Bank of America said it sees an attractive risk/reward for the battery company. “Freyr is a battery manufacturing company – one of many startup producers in the space but one of only few that has a proven cell chemistry, committed offtake and demonstrated success raising strategic capital.” SVB Securities upgrades AbbVie to market perform from underperform SVB said in its upgrade of the stock that earnings pre share guidance is encouraging. “Our new investment thesis is that ABBV should exceed its conservative 2023 guidance and the 2024 minimum EPS guidance is encouraging, although we still anticipate investor uncertainty to persist about the impact of 2H23 Humira biosimilar launches on 2024 results.” Baird upgrades Fleetcor Technologies to outperform from neutral Baird said the company has “good barriers and solid secular trends.” “We are upgrading to Outperform. We appreciate the ~9-10% organic growth profile in 2023, when many companies may be affected by macro. We view 10.5X 2024E as indicative of a limited growth company, while we think FLT could grow EPS ~15% year ex-fuel/fx in coming years.” Wells Fargo downgrades XPO Logistics to equal weight from overweight Wells said 2023 will be a challenging year for XPO. “Capital investment is focused on gaining market share, but is bringing tonnage on to the network with a negative price/cost spread, limiting upside to expectations in the near term.” JPMorgan downgrades Lyft to neutral from overweight JPMorgan downgraded the stock after its disappointing earnings report and says the outlook is too “challenging.” “Our positive thesis on Lyft had been based on post-pandemic recovery combined with an accelerated shift to profit through cost rationalization.” Read more about this call here. Mizuho upgrades Seagate, Micron and Western Digital to buy from hold Mizuhu upgraded several semi stocks on Friday and said it sees a rebound in memory. “We are upgrading MU ($72PT), WDC ($50PT), and STX ($82PT) to BUY from Neutral, as we see improving structural trends driving an ACCELERATED path to supply/demand balance for Memory.” Morgan Stanley downgrades Affirm to equal weight from overweight Morgan Stanley said it is concerned about dwindling growth for the buy not pay later company. “Affirm’s product ambitions are too large given narrow incremental benefits, slow consumer behavior change, development cost limitations, pricing missteps, and potential for increasing customer acquisition friction, all with a small time window for rapid customer base growth.” Read more about this call here. Stifel upgrades VF Corp to buy from hold Stifel said it sees an attractive entry point for VF Corp. “We are upgrading VFC shares to BUY and maintaining the 12 mos. TP of $30. The dividend cut and resulting dislocation in shares present an attractive entry point and we recommend capitalizing on elevated volume to build positions.” Bernstein reiterates Alphabet and Microsoft as outperform Bernstein said it’s standing by its outperform ratings in the search battle between Microsoft and Alphabet. “Much ink has already been spilled discussing how magical ChatGPT is and how AI-search could eventually upend Google’s once impenetrable stranglehold on search.”
