Thursday’s Biggest Analyst Calls: Nvidia Slips, SpaceX Overweight, AMD Gains and More

Here are the biggest calls on Wall Street on Thursday: The day’s analyst activity was dominated by Nvidia, as a wave of rating changes and uncertainty around leadership overshadowed a broad mix of updates across technology, healthcare, autos and consumer names.

Bernstein reaffirmed Apple as an outperform, saying the valuation is “reasonable” when weighed against customer loyalty, earnings durability, growth, free cash flow and shareholder returns. The firm’s reverse discounted cash flow pointed to a terminal growth rate of roughly 4%, which it deemed reasonable.

Piper Sandler downgraded General Mills to neutral from overweight, citing operating pressures and potential risks to the dividend level.

Barclays upgraded Reliance to overweight from equal weight, citing expectations for higher steel prices, tighter supply, stronger volumes and margins.

Oppenheimer downgraded Nvidia to perform from outperform, citing turmoil at the company and reports about the potential departure of co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang. The firm removed its price target. Bernstein later downgraded Nvidia to market perform from outperform, saying it had struggled to decide and preferred to watch from the sidelines.

KeyBanc upgraded Maravai Lifesciences to overweight from sector weight, describing the biotechnology company as a midterms winner. It pointed to disruptions from the Trump administration and HHS leadership under RFK Jr., including halted funding for mRNA programs, while noting that Maravai had reorganized with new management and reduced annualized expenses.

William Blair upgraded Advanced Micro Devices to outperform from market perform, saying AMD could benefit from the turmoil at Nvidia. It noted that while ASIC competition remains a risk to AMD’s Instinct unit, particularly with Meta and OpenAI, AMD may gain from custom programs and CPU attach opportunities.

Roth initiated coverage of Kimball Electronics with a buy rating and $37 price target.

BTIG initiated coverage of Quantinuum with a buy rating and $60 price target, calling the quantum computing company the current quality leader in the sector.

Jefferies initiated coverage of Pattern Group with a buy rating, saying the ecommerce management company is well positioned for growth.

Wells Fargo upgraded Engene to overweight from equal weight and raised its price target to $6 from $2, citing increasing confidence in the biotech company.

UBS initiated coverage of Ensysce Biosciences with a buy rating and $2 per share price target, describing an early-stage but differentiated opportunity in chronic pain.

Barclays initiated coverage of Dorman Products as overweight, saying the auto aftermarket company has positive catalysts ahead and expects revenue growth of 4% to 5% or more through 2028.

Bank of America downgraded Victoria’s Secret to neutral from buy, citing limited EPS upside.

Oppenheimer reiterated its outperform rating on SpaceX, saying the company remains a risk to big telecom. It described SpaceX as the $2 trillion elephant in the room, with growing terrestrial ambitions and a QCOM partnership, while incumbents remain dismissive or underestimate its speed-to-market.

Deutsche Bank reiterated its buy rating on Ulta Beauty and raised its price target to $723 from $671, citing confidence in the company’s sales momentum despite tougher comparisons.

Evercore ISI reiterated its outperform rating on Disney, saying the shares need to do more to break out. It said a catalyst could come from a product cycle, content cycle, or step-function improvement in the earnings growth curve.

Source link