Analyst upgrades: COF, DRI, MCD and WWY

Posted Aug 21st 2007 10:26AM by Kevin Shult
Filed under: Before the Bell, Analyst Reports, Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades, Good news, McDonald's (MCD), Darden Restaurants (DRI), Wrigley, (Wm) Jr (WWY), Stocks to Buy

MOST NOTEWORTHY: McDonald's (MCD), Micron Tech (MU), ManPower (MAN), ASML Holding (ASML) and Wm. Wrigley Jr Co (WWY) were today's notable upgrades:

McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) is creating shareholder value by selling 1600 under-performing restaurants and using the money for share buyback programs and dividends and was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Matrix.

AG Edwards upgraded Micron (NYSE: MU) to Buy from Hold on the belief notebook unit growth could stay in the 25-30% YoY range over the next two quarters, while desktop growth could pick up from the 4% attained in the June quarter. Up from a low of close to $5 in February, NAND spot prices are in the $8-$9 range for an 8Gb chip over the last few weeks.

ManPower (NYSE: MAN) was upgraded to Strong Buy from Hold at Matrix based on the growing demand for search services in Europe, Africa and North America.

Friedman Billings upgraded shares of ASML Holding (NASDAQ: ASML) to Outperform from Market Perform and added them to their Top Picks list based on recent checks that indicate a sustainable recovery in lithography tool bookings beyond Q3.

Bear upgraded shares of Wrigley (NYSE: WWY) to Peer Perform from Underperform citing the better-then-expected response to competitor Cadbury (CSG), UK momentum in developing markets, and likely strong performance by new gum, "5."

OTHER UPGRADES:

Calyon raised Capital One (NYSE: COF) to Buy from Add.

Goldman raised Darden Restaurants (NYSE: DRI) to Buy from Neutral.

Lehman upgraded National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM) to Overweight from Equal Weight.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

Tags: analyst, asml, capital one, CapitalOne, cof, darden, dri, man, manpower, mcd, mcdonalds, micron, mu, national semi, NationalSemi, rating, upgrade, wrigley, wwy

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

8-21-2007 @ 11:41AM

Brian Patterson said...

My son got e coli 0157 H:7 from eating a McDonalds meal in August 2002. He was on morphine for 7 days. Both McDonalds and Zurich ins. denied liability yet the CDC National PulseNet database found isolated and random PFGE matches. My advice to anyone is to save their reciepts and a uneaten portion of their meal for further testing and confirmation.