Analyst Downgrades: AT&T Inc., Baidu Inc, and Bank of America Corp

Analysts downwardly revised their ratings and price targets on telecommunication name AT&T Inc. (T), Chinese internet stock Baidu Inc (ADR) (BIDU), and banking giant Bank of America Corp (BAC)

Jan 11, 2017 at 10:43 AM

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Analysts are weighing in on telecommunication name AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), Chinese internet stock Baidu Inc (ADR) (NASDAQ:BIDU), and banking giant Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC). Here's a quick roundup of today's bearish brokerage notes on T, BIDU, and BAC.

T is trading 0.8% down at $40.49, following some mixed analyst attention. Deutsche Bank downgraded the stock to "hold" from "buy" and trimmed its price target to $43 from $44, while Barclays raised its price target to $41 from $39. Although T is up 12% from its mid-November low near $36, the shares have already dropped 4.5% since the beginning of 2017. Near-term option players are unusually put-skewed, meanwhile, with AT&T Inc.'s Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 3.97 sitting just 1 percentage point from an annual peak.
BIDU is trading 1.1% lower at $178.26, after Bernstein initiated coverage on the stock with an "underperform" rating and a price target of $150 -- representing a 16% discount to its current perch -- saying the company would be "well served by a return to its roots in core tech" and "a shift away from lifestyle services (O2O)," which have "wrecked the profitability of the company as a whole." Despite today's drop, BIDU is still up 10% from its late-December low of $162.02. In the option pits, buyers have been betting on more upside, with Baidu Inc's 50-day call/put volume ratio of 1.62 at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX) resting above 70% of all other readings from the past 12 months.
BAC is down 0.3% at $22.86, after UBS cut its rating on the stock to "neutral" from "buy" and lowered its price target by $1 to $23 -- after raising the stakes on this sector peer. Citigroup, meanwhile, issued a price-target hike to $26 from $19, in eight-year-high territory, ahead of this Friday morning's quarterly earnings report. The shares have been churning in the $22-$23 neighborhood since mid-December, though they recently found support at their 30-day moving average. In the option pits, near-term players are more put-skewed than usual, with BAC's SOIR of 0.76 arriving above 87% of all comparable readings taken in the past year.

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