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(This is CNBC Pro’s live coverage of Tuesday’s analyst calls and Wall Street chatter. Please refresh every 20-30 minutes to view the latest posts.) Some of Tuesday’s biggest calls featured upgrades on an aerospace giant and a key player in the buy now, pay later space. RBC raised its rating on Boeing to outperform, noting the setup for the stock heading into next year is improving. Jefferies also upgraded Affirm to hold from underperform as headwinds weighing on the stock ease. There were also some downgrades, however. UBS lowered its rating on ChargePoint, as the electric vehicle charging company’s struggles continue. Check out the latest calls and chatter below. 6:15 a.m. ET: Bernstein initiates Confluent as outperform Bernstein initiated coverage of Confluent with an outperform rating, categorizing the cloud provider as an “attractive revenue story with tailwinds from cloud adoption — a long-duration high-growth megatrend — with a durable competitive position relative to hyperscalers and new entrants.” Specifically, analyst Peter Weed pointed towards Confluent’s durable advantages versus newer entrants to the space. Weed’s $35 price target implies a potential 87% upside for the company. “We think several revenue-side controversies create an upside to consensus,” the analyst wrote. “There is debate about post-macro Cloud growth re-acceleration timing and pace — our model is more optimistic than some on the street.” Some investors are worried that Confluent’s strong correlation to cloud growth will break, but Weed disagrees, anticipating that this risk should decline as the company’s customer base continues to scale and diversify. — Lisa Kailai Han 6 a.m. ET: UBS downgrades ChargePoint and slashes price target Shares of ChargePoint may have plummeted nearly 80% this year, and UBS doesn’t see the situation improving anytime soon. The bank downgraded shares of the electric vehicle charging company to neutral from buy, simultaneously slashing its price target to a mere $2.25 from $9. This still corresponds to a 13% upside from the stock’s Monday closing price of $1.99. Analyst Robert Jamieson cited a “less clear” topline trajectory as a reason for the downgrade. While the company gained market share in 2023, Jamieson is more cautious on its growth growing forward. “As deliveries slow, we expect CHPT to see more material impact than other competitors that have lower L2 [Level 2] market share. We now expect FY24 and FY25 revenue of $515MM & $611MM, vs $628MM & $851MM, respectively,” he wrote. The analyst also highlighted ChargePoint’s weakness in the end-market fleet business, versus peers with more solid footing such as Blink Charging. “We expect a tougher competitive environment to pressure CHPT share in fleet,” Jamieson said. — Lisa Kailai Han 5:44 a.m. ET: Big banks see upside ahead for Broadcom following VMWare acquisition Broadcom’s acquisition of virtualization software firm VMWare should bode well for the combined company going forward, according to Bank of America and UBS. Following the closure of the acquisition, analysts from the two banks reiterated their buy ratings for shares of Broadcom and lifted their respective price targets. UBS’ Timothy Arcuri raised his price target to $1,125 from $925, implying upside of 18%. Bank of America’s Vivek Arya lifted his price target to $1,200, or more than a 26% increase from the stock’s Monday close of $950.24. Arcuri now predicts that free cash flow numbers for the combined entity will increase by 29% and 34% respectively for 2024 and 2025, allowing Broadcom to increase its dividends. Arya added that diving into the company’s business mix, VMWare changes Broadcom’s semis/software ratio to 60%/40% from 78%/22%. “On surface, it’s been tough to explain the synergy between the two segments, but we believe the underappreciated force has been AVGO’s power to leverage its enterprise CIO relationships and focus R & D/sales efforts into the right applications,” Arya wrote. — Lisa Kailai Han 5:31 a.m. ET: RBC upgrades Boeing, sees improving sentiment around the stock Shares of Boeing have been weighed down in 2022 and 2023 by execution and supply chain challenges and underperformance. But the setup for 2024 looks much more favorable for the company, according to RBC Capital Markets. Herbert upgraded Boeing to outperform from sector perform and lifted his price target to $275 from $200. That signals more than 25% upside from the stock’s Monday close of $219.30. “We believe we are in the early stages of a significant shift in sentiment on BA stock,” analyst Ken Herbert wrote. “We believe buy-side expectations for 2024-2025 [free cash flow] reflect conservatism, and as execution on the MAX and 787 continue to gradually improve, we believe the potential for positive revisions is growing.” Specifically, Herbert thinks strong demand in both the commercial and defense businesses — combined with improving production and delivery ramps — should bolster investor confidence towards an improving free cash flow outlook. — Lisa Kailai Han 5:31 a.m. ET: Jefferies upgrades Affirm Jefferies raised its rating on Affirm to hold from underperform and raised its price target to $30 per share. The firm said many of the factors pressuring the stock have “largely played out,” including “normalizing/deteriorating credit performance;” rising interest rates and “a trend of declining take rates given product and partner mix shift.” “Given that many of these factors have in one way or another come to play out, and given that we see stabilizing cost of capital and capital markets activity, stabilizing (if not improving for AFRM) credit performance and ongoing momentum in adoption rates for BNPL, we are moving our rating to Hold,” wrote analyst John Hecht. Shares of the buy now, pay later company have been on fire this year, surging more than 200%. Still, the stock is down 40% from its IPO price in 2021. Affirm closed Monday’s session at $29.37 per share. AFRM YTD mountain AFRM in 2023 — Fred Imbert
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