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It’s always a good idea to keep track of analysts’ stock upgrades. Often, they’re influenced by (1) company fundamentals, such as financial health, future growth, and even meetings with management; (2) industry and market trends, including specific market conditions and economics; (3) earnings and financial data, including earnings reports that came in better than expected, or competitive analysis of a competitor, and (4) guidance.
However, before jumping into a stock just because your favorite analyst upgraded it, do your own due diligence, fundamentally and technically.
That being said, here’s what analysts are most bullish on today.
Nike (NYSE: NKE): Analysts at Bank of America just reiterated a buy rating on Nike. The firm says the recent pullback since first-quarter earnings offers an attractive opportunity, especially with the firm seeing a path toward improvement in sales and margins. At the moment, NKE trades at $60 a share after the company’s forecast for another quarter of negative growth.
As noted by analysts at Needham after earnings, “NKE continues to make progress on their turnaround, with a significant QoQ acceleration in top-line trends and improvement in key focus areas of the business,” as quoted by Seeking Alpha.
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA): Ahead of NVIDIA earnings next week, analysts at Citi reiterated a buy rating on the stock, with a price target of $220 from $210. The firm expects NVDA to post sales of $56.8 billion, as compared to analyst expectations for $54.6 billion.
Analysts at Bank of America just reiterated a buy rating on NVIDIA. The firm says NVDA is well-positioned for healthcare and artificial intelligence. “NVIDIA, a leader in accelerated computing, has broadened its reach into high-compute healthcare workloads and continues to engage in partnerships on the application side,” they said, as quoted by CNBC.
Granted, NVIDIA is slipping in premarket. That was after SoftBank announced it had sold its entire stake in NVDA to help fund its investments in OpenAI. However, with continued strength in NVIDIA, the AI boom, and the lead-up to earnings, we do expect NVIDIA to turn aggressively higher.
Instacart (NASDAQ: CART): BMO analysts just upgraded the stock following earnings, noting Instacart continues to deepen its integration of AI technologies in tools for retail partners and enterprises. The company just posted EPS of 51 cents, which beat estimates by a penny. Revenue of $939 million, up 10.2% year over year, beat by $5.68 million.
In addition, as noted in a recent shareholder letter, “To underscore our confidence in long-term value creation, we authorized a $1.5 billion increase to our share repurchase program and plan to enter into a $250 million accelerated share repurchase program, while continuing to opportunistically repurchase shares.”