Analyst upgrades 4-12-07: DWA, KFT, PEP & VOD upgraded today

Posted Apr 12th 2007 11:11AM by Kevin Shult
Filed under: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades, Good news, PepsiCo (PEP), Kraft Foods'A' (KFT)

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Kraft Foods, Inc (KFT), Healthways, Inc (HWAY), PepsiCo (PEP) and Lam Research Corp (LRCX) were some of today's more noteworthy upgrades:

Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Kraft Foods Inc (NYSE: KFT) to Equal Weight from Underweight on valuation. UBS upgraded shares to Buy from Neutral on expectations the company may benefit from a purchase of Cadbury Schweppes' (CSG) confectionary unit; UBS believes Kraft could purchase Cadbury's confectionery unit for $20.8B and still see 7% accretion in 2008.
Elsewhere, Goldman Sachs upgraded Healthways Inc (NASDAQ: HWAY) to Neutral from Sell on valuation.
Bernstein raised PepsiCo's (NYSE: PEP) rating to Outperform from Market Perform with a $77 target, expecting the soft-drink maker to outperform rival Coca-Cola (KO) by more than 10% over the next year.
Citigroup upgraded Lam Research Corp (NASDAQ: LRCX) to Hold from Sell to reflect a more bullish 2-3 year memory capex view and the firm believes customers of Samsung/Hynix continue to have an upward bias.

OTHER UPGRADES:

Vodafone PLC (NYSE: VOD) was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank on valuation.
JP Morgan upgraded shares of Intersil Corp (NASDAQ: ISIL) to Overweight from Neutral.
Dreamworks Animation SKG, Inc (NYSE: DWA) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Pali Capital.
Sappi Ltd (NYSE: SPP) was raised to Buy from Sell at Merrill Lynch.
JP Morgan added VCA Antech, Inc (NASDAQ: WOOF) to its Focus List with a $46 target, citing the company's near-term growth prospects.