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)
Analysts downwardly revised their ratings and price targets on T, BIDU, and BAC
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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