Here are Wednesday's biggest analyst calls: Apple, Tesla, Walmart, Chevron, Lumentum, Rivian & more

Published Wed, May 10 20238:40 AM EDT

Here are Wednesday's biggest calls on Wall Street: Bank of America upgrades Celsius Holdings to buy from neutral Bank of America said in its upgrade of the energy drink company that it sees improving consumption. "Since initiating on Celsius Holdings in January we have kept a close eye on evolving scanner trends for signs of velocity improvement to emerge once distribution expansion slowed." Barclays downgrades Lumentum to equal weight from overweight Barclays said in its downgrade of the laser company that it sees no compelling reason to accumulate Lumentum shares right now. "Another reset, but this time across all segments. We move to Equal Weight as we struggle to find a compelling reason to support the stock with no imminent positive catalyst and further risk to Telecom." Read more about this call here. Barclays initiates 10X Genomics as overweight Barclays said in its initiation of the gene sequencing biotech company that it has margin expansion opportunities for 10X. "New product launches + conservative guidance + underpenetrated market. Spatial provides long-term opportunity and further diversification outside of single-cell." Baird upgrades Alcon to outperform from neutral Baird said in its upgrade of the eyecare company that margin uncertainties are easing. "But with 1Q margin upside and contact lens sequential improvement bolstering our confidence both in this year and ALC's longer-term margin improvement potential, we now see a multi-year path to continued upside for this stock and are upgrading shares to Outperform." Wells Fargo initiates Braze as overweight Wells said the cloud based software company is "well positioned." "While we recognize a tough macro for most, our work suggests BRZE is well positioned to blaze a path ahead & maintain growth given its differentiated customer engagement platform, robust value prop, & quick time to value." DA Davidson initiates JFrog as buy DA said the software company is an AI beneficiary. " JFrog' s mission critical software supply chain platform reduces complexity and we are impressed with the company's history of balancing growth and margins." HSBC downgrades Anheuser-Busch InBev to hold from buy HSBC said the beverage giant is having a brand "crisis." "The lead-up to this Bud Light crisis and the handling of it renews questions about whether A-B can build a brand culture." Read more about this call here. Piper Sandler reiterates Tesla as overweight Piper said its checks show wait times for Tesla's Model Y jumping which portends "solid production" for the rest of the second quarter. "American buyers must now wait 3-12 weeks to receive all variants of the Model Y, up from 0-3 weeks when we checked the website yesterday." Bank of America upgrades InterDigital to buy from underperform Bank of America said in its double upgrade of the 5G device licensing company that it has a "robust pipeline." "Strong 1Q results and robust catalysts over the next 1-2 years (medium-term) drive us to upgrade InterDigital , a leader in 5G device licensing, to Buy from U/P. JPMorgan downgrades Dutch Bros to neutral from overweight JPMorgan said it sees slowing comps for the coffee company. "Details in the Dutch Bros 1Q23 results finally tip the scale for us as we retreat back to a Neutral rating, first put in place on June 2022, before we rated OW in October 2022." Barclays reiterates Apple as equal weight Barclays said in its analysis of Apple TV+ that "incremental content spend could take some cash away from buybacks." "TV+ is a small revenue contributor to AAPL Services (2% by our estimates). We also estimate it currently has a negative operating margin as it is loss-making and dilutive to EPS." Evercore ISI adds a tactical outperform on Walmart Evercore added a tactical outperform on the stock heading into earnings next week and said it's a "trade down beneficiary." "Outperformance, look for a meaningful pullback given a rising probability for downwards revisions. WMT, comp traffic potential, trade down beneficiary, and stock price only flat vs mkt YTD." TD Cowen downgrades Nikola to market perform from outperform TD Cowen said it sees a "lack of investor enthusiasm" for shares of the electric truck company. "however, with limited ability to raise capital given they can only issue ~60mn shares before hitting their outstanding cap coupled with the overall macro environment and lack of investor enthusiasm for emerging EV companies, we are moving to the sidelines." Goldman Sachs reiterates Chevron as neutral Goldman said it's waiting for an "upstream inflection" before getting positive on Chevron shares. "While we recently downgraded Exxon to Neutral after outperformance, we believe it is too early to get positive on Chevron shares until we get closer to an Upstream inﬂection." Piper Sandler upgrades Halozyme Therapeutics to overweight from neutral Piper said likes Halozyme's pipeline of products. "On the background of HALO's recent pullback and now through 1Q, we are upgrading to Overweight from Neutral as we believe the royalty business, despite some longer term uncertainty, is still well positioned in the near-term to continue its meaningful growth trajectory within the current commercial portfolio along with significant catalysts across the partner pipeline." Bank of America reiterates Virgin Galactic as underperform Bank of America said it still sees too much uncertainty for the spaceflight company. "We maintain our Underperform rating based on the uncertain macroeconomic backdrop and the discretionary nature of SPCE's business model. We may revisit our model after our call with management." Bank of America reiterates Rivian as buy Bank of America saidit's standing by shares of the electric vehicle company after its earnings report on Tuesday. "We reiterate our Buy rating on RIVN , which is predicated on our view that the company is one of the most viable among the start-up EV automakers and also a relative competitive threat to incumbent OEMs." Read more about this call here. KeyBanc downgrades Twilio to sector weight from overweight KeyBanc said in its downgrade of the cellular and text communication tools company that it's seeing "meaningful deceleration." "We are downgrading shares of TWLO from OW (prior PT $89) to SW post Twilio's relatively strong 1Q23 result and poor guide for 2Q23 indicating a possible meaningful deceleration in both Twilio's Communication segment."