Analyst downgrades: HSY, COGN, RMD and ARTE

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Hershey Foods, Cognos, Resmed and Artes Medical were today's noteworthy downgrades:

Hershey (NYSE: HSY) was downgraded to Underperform from Peer Perform at Bear Stearns. Bear believes the new CEO will be under intense pressure to improve operating performance, which will likely lead to higher R&D and marketing spending.
Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN) was downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Morgan Stanley following the acquisition by IBM (NYSE: IBM).
ABN Amro lowered its rating on Resmed (NYSE: RMD) to Hold from Buy on valuation following the recent rally.
Cowen downgraded Artes Medical (NASDAQ: ARTE) to Neutral from Buy following the company's disappointing Q3 report.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

Merrill downgraded Target (NYSE: TGT) to Neutral from Buy.
Goldman downgraded Gatehouse Media (NYSE: GHS) and NewStar Financial (NASDAQ: NEWS) to Neutral from Buy.
Bernstein downgraded Rio Tinto (NYSE: RTP) to Market Perform from Outperform.

Tags: analyst, arte, artes medical, ArtesMedical, cogn, cognos, downgrade, gatehouse, ghs, hershey, hsy, ibm, news, newstar, rio tinto, RioTinto, rtp, target, tgt

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