Analyst Upgrades

• RBC Capital upgraded Brookfield Infrastructure (BIP) to outperform from sector perform with a $20 target. The firm thinks the units' valuation is compelling, while the company's proposed acquisition of assets is positive.
• Stifel upgraded First Horizon (FHN) to buy from hold based on valuation and its path towards normalized profitability. The firm has a $15 price target on the stock.
• KeyBanc upgraded Isle of Capri (ISLE) to buy from hold based on improved earnings growth and valuation. The firm has a $13 target on the stock.
• ATA Inc. (ATAI) was upgraded to neutral from underweight at Piper Jaffray.
• Buckeye Partners (BPL) was upgraded to neutral from sell at Goldman.
• Sinopec (SNP) was upgraded to overweight from neutral at HSBC.

Demand rose after China eased restrictions on fuel prices last December, and that translated a record second-quarter profit for Asia's biggest refiner, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., also known as Sinopec.

Beijing-based Sinopec's net income surged to 22 billion yuan ($3.22 billion) in the three months that ended June 30, according to estimates by Bloomberg News. That easily topped the analysts' consensus estimate of 15.8 billion yuan.

Who said big oil was a dying business? Fortune has released its Global 500, their "annual ranking of the world's largest corporations," and topping the charts is Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A), which, much like a Mariah Carey song, bumped up into the coveted number-one slot after some time at number three. The Netherlands-based oil company trumped its U.S. rival, Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) by $15 billion in sales and saw its revenue spike nearly 29% from 2007.

Speaking of Exxon, the company once again had a tiger in its tank, ranking number two in the world as oil futures bounced around in a nearly $100-dollar range, hitting $146 per barrel at its heights.

World-class scientific instrument manufacturer and data monitoring company Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) was recently chosen to supply measuring instruments and data capture expertise to Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemicals Co. (ADR) (NYSE: SHI), China's largest producer and supplier of oil and petrochemical products.

Monetary details of the deal were not disclosed in the press release but Thermo Fisher Scientific currently has over $9 billion in annual revenue and serves more than 350,000 biotech companies, hospitals and various research institutions that capture and/or monitor data in real time.

Thermo Fisher Scientific has been involved in data collecting in the petrochemical industry for more than two decades. Its laboratory information management system (LMS) will be the standard for all data manipulation at Sinopec. Such standardization will enhance cost efficiencies, improve real-time data monitoring and reduce time to market. Thermo Fisher Scientific instruments and processes are already in use at multiple Sinopec laboratories in China.

Shares of both Thermo Fisher Scientific and Sinopec rose on the news. Thermo Fisher Scientific closed at $47.45, up $0.73, while shares of Sinopec were up $0.68 to close at $53.78.

In unrelated news, Thermo Fisher Scientific sold one of its divisions, Genevac, to Riverlake Equity Partners LP for an undisclosed sum. Genevac makes equipment used in pharmaceutical research.