November 24, 2009 -- 09:35 ET| Today's Short Stories |
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| 09:30 -- 10:00 (Updated throughout the hour) |
| Acuity Brands upgraded to Outperform at Oppenheimer; tgt raised to $40 . Oppenheimer upgrades AYI to Outperform from Perform and raises their tgt to $40 from $37, based on recent relative weakness and increased conviction on traction in market share strategies, other growth initiatives, and some areas of potential comparison benefits in FY10. Firm also notes ongoing solid operating margin execution. |
| Allos Therapeutics initiated with a Buy at ThinkEquity . ThinkEquity initiates ALTH with a Buy based upon their belief that the commercial potential for the newly-approved Folotyn in PTCL is underappreciated. The firm believes that the current treatments for this very ill population are ineffective and that Folotyn sales will rapidly grow as the hematology/oncology community adopts the drug across the range of T-cell lymphomas. The firm believes that additional upside to the stock could materialize from positive data in the broader oncology market. |
| Medicis: NDA filing on new doses of Solodyn is negative but not unexpected - Collins Stewart . Collins Stewart is maintaining their Hold rating on MRX shares following Barr's (subsidiary of Teva) PIV filing on MRX's two new strengths of Solodyn (65mg and 115mg). This is negative for MRX, but it is not surprising given how aggressively generics cos are with Paragraph IV filings. They would ultimately expect Solodyn's generic erosion to be gradual given MRX's life cycle mgmt strategies for the drug. Therefore, any weakness in MRX shares as a result of Barr's Paragraph IV filing is likely to be short lived, because long-term growth for MRX will be driven by, Dysport, LipoSonix, Revance as well as other pipeline opportunities. They would get more aggressive with MRX's stock if sales of key products (Solodyn and Dysport) exceed expectations and/or if MRX successfully commercializes its pipeline (Liposonix, Revance and additional forms of Solodyn). |
| Netflix downgraded to Underperform at Wedbush; maintains $50 tgt . Wedbush downgrades NFLX to Underperform from Neutral and maintains their $50 tgt, as we believe that NFLX shares are trading above full value. Firm notes that NFLX's recent financial performance has been solid, with Q3 EPS well above expectations, and the company exceeded guidance on every metric. However, they believe that the stock's current price reflects investor expectations for growth well above what can be reasonably expected. They note their downgrade may be early, as the co's recent PS3 partnership is likely to accelerate subscriber growth, and the company's $200 mln share buy back program ( 3.3 million shares at current prices) may drive the shares higher near term. |
| Salesforce.com upgraded to Outperform at Wedbush Morgan; tgt raised to $74 . Wedbush Morgan upgrades CRM to Outperform from Neutral and raises their tgt to $74 from $63 as the firm believes that the co will appreciate more relative to many of the other stocks in their coverage universe over the next 12 months, given the company's strong and stable base of recurring revenue and low and very achievable expectations for growth in F2011. To be sure, as the global economic environment slowly lifts from its protracted decline, the firm believes CRM is in an optimum position to capitalize on improving business trends such as enterprises shifting their primary imperatives to revenue generating activities from cost-savings. This shift could be precipitated by increases in sales capacity, which likely would benefit Salesforce.com's core SFA product sales. |
| BEFORE THE OPEN |
| Tech Data target raised to $50 at Brean Murray following earnings yesterday morning . Brean Murray raises their TECD tgt to $50 from $40 following the fourth consecutive quarter (yesterday morning) of strong EPS beats; they continue to believe TECD's beat-and-raise story remains intact. TECD's performance continues to confirm their thesis of strong, consistent, and sustainable execution. TECD continues to expand margins through this softer demand environment, and achieved its strongest Oct Q operating margins (1.17%) since 2002. They believe this bodes well for leverage as IT continues to recover. The biggest (non-secular) risk to their rating likely remains any potential for increased competitive pricing heading into 2010 should demand slow. |
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| Market Internals Data |
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| Issues | NYSE | Nasdaq |
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| Advancing | | | | Declining | | | | Unchanged | 120 | 148 | | Total | 120 | 148 | | Ratio | | Adv. / Dec. | 0.00 | 0.00 |
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