Here are Wednesday’s biggest calls on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs downgrades Morgan Stanley to neutral from buy Goldman said it sees better value elsewhere than Morgan Stanley. “While a high quality franchise, we believe that there are other stocks better positioned to benefit from the capital markets recovery.” Goldman Sachs upgrades Evercore to buy from neutral Goldman said the investment banking firm is “best in class.” “We expect EVR to continue delivering above-average revenue growth and market share gains, as investments in advisory and non-advisory bear fruit, and given its best-in-class skew to parts of the cycle that we expect to outperform.” Rosenblatt initiates Canaan as buy Rosenblatt said the bitcoin miner is well positioned. “We are initiating coverage of Canaan (NASDAQ: CAN) with a Buy rating and a $3.00 12-month price target. We view Canaan’s position in front of the coming Bitcoin bull market as compelling.” Jefferies upgrades Williams-Sonoma to buy from hold Jefferies said Williams-Sonoma has earnings per share upside. “Housing recovery beneficiary with 25% of sales tied to existing home sales.” Guggenheim initiates Elastic as buy Guggenheim said it’s bullish on shares of the software company. “Elastic is best known as the leading enterprise search engine, enabling highly relevant results across corporate websites to product catalogs, and even powers the tech stacks of some competitors. Over the last decade, Elastic has extended its core strength — indexing and searching through vast amounts of unstructured data — into other adjacent use cases, including observability and security.” JPMorgan initiates Viking Therapeutics as overweight JPMorgan said it’s bullish on Viking’s obesity drug. “We continue to think the market for GLP-1s will be substantial, with US market sales of ~$120bn in 2030E, and orals will play an increasingly important role.” Citi adds a positive catalyst watch on Apollo Global Citi said it’s bullish on the asset management company ahead of its investor day. ” APO has its first investor day since 2021 coming up on October 1, 2024.” Citi upgrades Charter to neutral from sell Citi said the cable company’s fundamentals are getting better. “We are upgrading CHTR shares to Neutral with an unchanged target price of $350.” Bernstein reiterates Robinhood as outperform Bernstein said the stock trading company is well positioned with millennials. “Millennials have risen from 1% in 2010 to 10% of household wealth in the U.S. With HOOD’s product focused on the younger demographic, 60% of HOOD’s assets are from customers under the age of 43.” Bank of America downgrades Novartis to neutral from buy Bank of America said in its downgrade of Novartis that it sees no near term positive catalysts ahead. “Fewer catalysts to drive further beat/raise.” JPMorgan reiterates Nvidia as overweight JPMorgan said stocks such as Nvidia are “strong beneficiaries in the emerging AI arms race.” “In Compute, Nvidia is the clear leader in this market with its silicon, software, hardware systems, and full-stack ecosystem for training/deploying these complex models.” Morgan Stanley reiterates Arm as a top pick Morgan Stanley said it’s sticking with its overweight rating on the semiconductor chip company. “As outlined in our recent industry note, we think Arm is an important part of the shift to edge AI.” Bank of America reiterates Apple as buy Bank of America said it’s standing by its buy rating on shares of Apple. “Maintain Buy on Apple on multi-year iPhone upgrade cycle, tailwind to GMs [gross margins] and strong cash flows.” Wells Fargo upgrades One Gas to overweight from equal weight Wells upgraded the nat gas company after a series of investor meetings. “On the heels of constructive investor meetings, we upgrade OGS to Overweight from Equal Weight.” Wells Fargo adds Spotify to the signature picks list Wells said the stock is “recession defensive.” “We’re bullish on mid-teens OI [operating income] margins over the medium-term, think SPOT will take an increasing share of music monetization and is under-owned.” Wells Fargo removes Disney from the signature picks list Wells said it’s sticking with its overweight rating on the stock but is removing it from the top picks list. “However, recession uncertainty clouds Disney’ s near-term outlook.” Wells Fargo adds Shopify to the signature picks list Wells said Shopify has a myriad of opportunities for “outsized growth.” ” Shopify’s right to win up-market is reaching an inflection point.” Truist reiterates Alphabet as buy Truist said it’s sticking with shares of the search giant. “We remain constructive on GOOGL but believe that visibility into potential cannibalization of its search traffic and monetization of gen-AI searches (expected to begin by year-end) will dictate the direction of the stock N/M [near medium] term.” Wolfe upgrades Antero Resources to outperform from peer perform Wolfe sad it sees an “opportunistic entry” for the hydrocarbon company. “We see AR caught up in a broader sector rotation that resets risk / reward with implied value that is now competitive with CHK and EQT.” Jefferies initiates AES as buy Jefferies initiated the utilities and power generation company with a buy and says it’s a “way to gain exposure to US renewables with a quality improvement twist at a discounted price.” ” AES owns a global portfolio of energy infrastructure assets and is on a rapid path to have the vast majority of its earnings generated by US renewables and regulated utilities, while exiting coal exposure.”
