Here are the biggest calls on Wall Street on Tuesday.
PiperJaffray initiated Nvidia as 'overweight'PiperJaffray initiated coverage on Nvidia saying they expect the gaming industry to continue to grow.
"We are initiating NVIDIA with an Overweight rating as we believe it is trading at attractive levels given its exposure and market positioning in several secular trends... In our opinion, despite recent headwinds, gaming is primed for growth in the second half of the year, as we see gaming growing year-over-year from its $1.4 billion run-rate... We also see the data center and automotive markets as two long-term secular growth markets, especially given NVIDIA's product positioning and recently announced Mellanox acquisition... Additionally, we believe NVIDIA has the opportunity for significant margin expansion from levels in the most recent quarter... As the company executes, we expect NVIDIA's earnings to grow rapidly... At a price of $173.78, NVIDIA trades at 33.3x our fiscal 2020E non-GAAP EPS of $5.22. Our 12-month PT of $200 is based on a P/E multiple of ~38x our fiscal 2020 EPS estimate..."
Raymond James upgraded Bed, Bath, & Beyond to 'strong buy' from 'market perform'Raymond James upgraded the stock after a Wall Street Journal report said that some shareholders are looking to replace the board of the company.
"This upgrade comes directly on the heels of the late Monday evening WSJ article highlighting that a select group of shareholders plan to wage a campaign to replace the entire 12- member board of Bed Bath & Beyond and shortly before the company's F4Q18 report... The activists emergence coincides with this note, which we have been preparing for weeks to highlight that within the foreseeable future, Bed Bath & Beyond may either no longer be a public company or on a journey to go private... If that happens, clients that have shorted the shares (33% of float) would be damaged... While the analysis in this note is centered on a potential take-out case, many of the same merits that make Bed Bath & Beyond attractive for a takeout also hold true from an activist standpoint... The most difficult issue facing all investors is the same: management's irritating lack of transparency...."
Deutsche Bank upgraded BB&T to 'buy' from 'hold'Deutsche Bank is positive on the merger between BB&T and SunTrust.
"We remain positive on the merger of BBT/STI and the combined stock... As a result, we are upgrading BBT to Buy to be consistent with our Buy rating on STI... Note that since the day after the BBT/STI deal was announced on Feb 7, BBT shares are down 11% (STI is -12%) vs. -6% for the BKX Index and +4% for the S&P 500... This follows a 4% rise in BBT and 10% increase in STI the day the deal was announced (vs. peers up less than 1%)..."
Bernstein initiated Dow Inc. as 'overweight'Bernstein expects investors to react positively to the new Dow which is a a chemical company that will be spun off from DowDupont on April 1st.
"We initiate coverage of Dow with an Outperform rating and a target price of $74/share, driven by our belief that tightening ethylene markets will yield an upcycle in 2020... Tactically, we see a compelling entry point in mid- to late-April, as we expect the stock to sell off immediately after the spin before it moves up to our target price over the next year.... Dow will be spun out of DowDuPont as a distribution to DWDP shareholders on April 1st... We expect Dow shares to trade down immediately following the spin based on conversations with investors, and the precedent of other spinouts... We expect that Dow shares will recover over the next 12 months as resilient fundamentals segue into an outright ethylene upcycle in 2020 that will drive US integrated ethane margins to ~$1200/tonne. This will drive Dow EBITDA from $9.1bln in 2018 to $14.5bln in 2020. Though the ethylene upcycle will likely only last for 1-2 years, we expect Dow shares to follow margins..."
