• HSBC upgraded Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE: RBS) to Overweight from Neutral as it believes the risk of immediate nationalization has been removed.
  
• JP Morgan upgraded DTS Inc (NASDAQ: DTSI) to Overweight from Neutral to reflect accretion from the Neural acquisition and its expectation the company can generate strong cash flow during the downturn. The firm raised its target to $18.
  
• Cowen upgraded Coach (NYSE: COH) to Outperform from Neutral citing the recent sell-off in shares.
  
• BJ's Wholesale (NYSE: BJ) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at UBS.
  
• First Horizon (NYSE: FHN) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley.
  
• Spartech (NYSE: SEH) was raised to Hold from Underweight at KeyBanc.

Continue reading Analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations: RBS, COH, BJ, QCOM, SNDK, MAT, MGM ...

Analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations: RBS, COH, BJ, QCOM, SNDK, MAT, MGM ... originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Analyst upgrades:

• Goldman upgraded shares of British Sky Broadcasting (NYSE: BSY) to Buy from Neutral and added the company to the Conviction Buy List as they find the stock oversold at current levels.
  
• Goldman also added Publicis (OTC: PUBGY) to the Conviction Buy List and upgraded shares to Buy from Neutral as they find the stock cheap at current levels.
• Oneok (NYSE: OKE) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Lehman.
  
• UBS raised Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods (NYSE: WBD) to Buy from Neutral.

Analyst downgrades:

• Baird downgraded Amylin Pharma (NASDAQ: AMLN) to Neutral from Outperform and said they are incrementally more cautious on the commercial performance of Amylin's Byetta following the yesterday's update. Amylin's target was lowered to $27 from $37. Soleil recommends investors avoid Amylin with the disclosure last night of four additional cases of mortality associated with pancreatitis in patients who were on Byetta. The firm cut shares to Sell from Hold and lowered their target to $20 from $25.
  
• Citigroup downgraded shares of AMR Corp. (NYSE: AMR) to Sell from Hold on valuation as they find the stock expensive following the recent run-up. The firm raised their target to $9 from $6.70 to reflect the drop in crude prices.
  
• J Crew (NYSE: JCG) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Brean Murray following the weak Q2 report and guidance.
• JMP Securities downgraded Quality Systems (NASDAQ: QSII) to Market Perform from Outperform.
  
• National Grid (NYSE: NGG) was lowered to Equal Weight from Overweight at Lehman.

Analyst initiations:

Continue reading Analyst calls: AMR, JCG, AMLN, NGG . . .

Analyst calls: AMR, JCG, AMLN, NGG . . . originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• Jefferies downgraded shares of Golar LNG (NASDAQ: GLNG) to Hold from Buy on valuation, as they see limited upside over the next 12 months.
  
• Banc of America downgraded shares of Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE) to Neutral from Buy on difficult fundamentals, as they believe solar industry gross margins will continue to contract due to silicon competition and decelerating demand in Spain and Germany.
  
• SunTrust lowered Bill Barrett Corporation (NYSE: BBG) to Neutral from Buy based on valuation and lack of near-term exploration catalysts.

• Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK) was lowered to Accumulate from Buy at ThinkEquity.
  
• Goldman removed Oneok (NYSE: OKE) from its Conviction Buy List.
  
• Merrill Lynch downgraded Boardwalk Pipeline Partners (NYSE: BWP) to Sell from Buy.

Analyst downgrades: Golar LNG, Yingli Green Energy, Bill Barrett Corp. originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

ONEOK (NYSE: OKE) purchases, transports, stores and distributes natural gas in the United States. The firm's ONEOK Partners segment is engaged in the fractionation of natural gas liquids and the gathering and processing natural gas, primarily in the Mid-Continent and Rocky Mountain regions. The Distribution unit provides natural gas distribution services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. The Energy Services operation focuses primarily on marketing natural gas. ONEOK sold its gathering and processing, natural gas liquids, pipelines and storage businesses to ONEOK Partners in 2006 and became that company's general partner and 46% owner.

The firm pleased investors last week, when it boosted its FY07 EPS guidance from $2.62-2.72 to $2.75-2.79. The Street had been looking for $2.66. Management also issued FY08 guidance of $2.75-3.15 ($2.87 consensus). OKE shares popped on the news and then moved into a bullish "pennant" consolidation pattern. Prices frequently exit pennants moving in the same direction they were traveling on entry. In this case, that would be to the upside.

Brokers recommend the shares with two "strong buys", one "buy" and six "holds". The OKE P/E ratio (19.83), Price to Sales ratio (0.40), Price to Book ratio (2.66), Price to Cash Flow ratio (7.40), Price to Free Cash Flow ratio (28.53) and Revenue per Employee ($2.77M) compare favorably with industry, sector and S&P 500 averages. Institutions hold about 74% of the outstanding shares. The stock is one of those used to calculate the S&P 400 MidCap Index. Over the past 52 weeks, it has traded between $39.26 and $55.27. A stop-loss of $42.00 looks good here. Note that the firm is expected to report Q4 results on February 25th, after the closing bell.

Larry Schutts is a contributing editor for Theflyonthewall.com and the Vice-President of Stockwinners.com. He does not hold a position in the stock discussed above.

ONEOK (OKE) shares forming bullish pennant after favorable guidance originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Oklahoma turns 100 years old this year, and I wrote a bit about its business climate in my recent Investing in Oklahoma post. That post featured some growth companies based in Oklahoma: Arena Resources Inc. (NYSE: ARD), Helmerich & Payne Inc. (NYSE: HP), Unit Corp. (NYSE: UNT), Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK), ONEOK Inc. (NYSE: OKE), Devon Energy Corp. (NYSE: DVN), and the Williams Companies (NYSE: WMB).

Earlier this year, the Motley Fool also took at look at Oklahoma companies, and focused on some of the same energy sector companies that I did. Its search also included two non-energy companies as well: drive-in burger chain Sonic Corp. (NASDAQ: SONC) for its growth potential, and Tulsa-based Dollar Thrifty Automotive (NYSE: DTG).

Sonic recently announced 21 consecutive years of positive same-store sales performance, and reaffirmed its 33 cents earnings per share earnings expectations for the fourth quarter. For fiscal 2008, Sonic expects earnings growth of 15% to 17%. The consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial is that Sonic is a buy. The share price was $23.40 at the close on Friday, up from a 52-week low of $20.02 in late July, not yet quite back to its 52-week high of $25.09 in May, but still up from its stumble at the end of August after an analyst's downgrade based on labor and dairy costs. That was before the announcement and reaffirmed expectations mentioned above. Also, Sonic made the Forbes list of 100 best mid cap stocks in America.

Continue reading Investing in Oklahoma: Sonic (SONC), Dollar Thrifty (DTG), OGE Energy (OGE)

Investing in Oklahoma: Sonic (SONC), Dollar Thrifty (DTG), OGE Energy (OGE) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Oklahoma celebrates its centennial in November -- Happy Birthday, Oklahoma!

Today, Oklahoma is known as one of the most business-friendly states, due in part to low tax rates. Oklahoma's economy is based largely on the energy, aviation, and food processing sectors. From 2000 to 2006, Oklahoma's gross domestic product increased 50 percent. The GDP per capita grew almost 10 percent between 2005 and 2006, one of the highest rates in the nation.

Fortune magazine's 2007 list of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. included six from Oklahoma. At number three on the list was Tulsa-based Arena Resources Inc. (NYSE: ARD), a seven-year old oil and gas firm with a three-year annual growth rate of 165 percent. Back in August, Arena announced strong second quarter 2007 financial and operating results. Arena is also a major holding in the Bruce Fund, which recently made the 2007 Forbes Honor Roll.

Tulsa-based oil and gas driller Helmerich & Payne Inc. (NYSE: HP) had a three-year annual growth rate of 37 percent, which beat the S&P 500. In August, H&P announced strong second quarter 2007 results, as well as two new contracts. The Motley Fool sees expansion in other sectors as good news for drillers such as H&P.

Continue reading Investing in Oklahoma: Arena Resources (ARD), Chesapeake Energy (CHK), ONEOK (OKE) and others

Investing in Oklahoma: Arena Resources (ARD), Chesapeake Energy (CHK), ONEOK (OKE) and others originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.