Here are the biggest analyst calls of the day: Foot Locker, Slack, Lyft & more
- Guggenheim upgraded Lyft to buy from neutral
- Seaport upgraded Canopy Growth to buy from neutral
- Susquehanna downgraded Foot Locker to neutral from positive
- Raymond James upgraded Dish to strong buy from market perform
- Bank of America downgraded Elanco to neutral from buy
- Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. initiated Slack as buy
Here are the biggest calls on Wall Street on Monday:
Guggenheim upgraded Lyft to 'buy' from 'neutral'
Guggenheim cited several factors including rising fares for its upgrade of the stock.
"Key Themes: 1) We are pulling profit expectations forward with improving US ride hail competitive dynamics and LYFT's surprising leverage to that trend; 2) With fares rising and incentives falling, we now expect LYFT to be EBITDA positive in 2021 (prior 2023) and get to $1.5B by 2023; 3) Based on 15x our 2023 EBITDA estimate and discounting back, we get to a $60 PT. Risks remain, to be sure, but we argue that the Street has under-appreciated leverage in the model to pricing and take-rate."
Read more about this call here.
Seaport upgraded Canopy Growth to 'buy' from 'neutral'
Seaport said shares of the cannabis company now look "attractive."
"CGC shares have now round-tripped themselves YTD, and are in fact down 7.4% compared to a 13.6% increase in the S&P 500. Since April, there have been two significant declines in the broader market, coinciding with a large sell-off in the cannabis space. To be sure, cannabis has been a risk-off trade to this point, and the Street has had to reset growth and profit expectations for the space and Canopy, alike. However, we would argue that cannabis beta needs to improve going forward, particularly for CGC."
Read more about this call here.
Susquehanna downgraded Foot Locker to 'neutral' from 'positive'
Susquehanna Financial downgraded the stock after the company's earnings report and said that Foot Locker's outlook is still too optimistic.
"Take to the bench as 2Q19 results disappointed and the outlook is too optimistic. The stock is trading 4 turns below its 5 year average FY2 P/E of 11.9x, but there are some internal focus and execution issues at hand. FL has a strong model, and has and should continue to have the support of the major brands. Investments in data analytics, new store formats, digital and omni-channel capabilities, and a FLX loyalty program/CRM system will take time for FL to fully harvest, but that time appears to be moving out."
Raymond James upgraded Dish to 'strong buy' from 'market perform'
Raymond James said it sees upside on several fronts for Dish involving both its pay-TV and wireless operations.
"We like DISH whether it: 1) stays a PayTV-only operator with a significant 5G spectrum portfolio, 2) adds 4G wireless operations based on the FCC/DOJ settlements when TMUS/S deal closes, or 3) gets additional benefits from a settlement in TMUS/S vs. State AGs lawsuit. We think it is an opportune time to buy DISH with the TMUS/S merger saga hopefully wrapping up in the next 6 months, and the ramping of 5G network deployments by U.S. carriers needing multiple spectrum bands."
Bank of America downgraded Elanco to 'neutral' from 'buy'
Bank of America said it sees "too much uncertainty" over the animal health company's proposed deal to acquire Bayer's Animal Health business.
"On August 20th, Elanco announced the proposed acquisition of Bayer's Animal Health business for a total of $7.6bn. The deal was widely expected, given prior news reports and mgmt. commentary on the recent earnings call. Overall, some of the details of the deal exceeded our prior expectations: notably, the overall purchase price is lower than some press reports speculated; the combined company's margin profile is better than expected; and headwinds to growth could be smaller than expected. Therefore, there is a case to be made that after some near-term pain, the deal could potentially turn out quite positively in the out-years. But for the time being, we still see too much uncertainty, including which parts of the portfolio will be divested due to antitrust issues and what is the true go-forward growth rate of the business."
Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. initiated Slack as 'buy'
Monness said in its initiation note of the business collaboration messaging service that it has "exciting possibilities."
"We believe Slack is one of the next-generation software platforms that leadership at organizations around the world will increasingly equip their employees with during this digital transformation journey. As evidenced by the 82% revenue growth achieved in FY:19, Slack has clearly struck a chord as a collaboration tool for workers and we believe the evolution of this new software layer in the organization has exciting possibilities."