Top Stocks Upgrades-Downgrades June 19, 2013

UPGRADES

• Toll Brothers (TOL) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Argus – Target $42

DOWNGRADES

• Cliffs Natural (CLF) downgraded at BofA/Merrill – Target $16
• BlackBerry (BBRY) downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform at Bernstein – Target $10
• Sprint (S) downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Macquarie
• American Eagle (AEO) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup – Target $21

NEW COVERAGE

• PepsiCo (PEP) initiated with a Neutral at Credit Suisse – Target $87
• Coca-Cola (KO) initiated with an Outperform at Credit Suisse – Target $48

HEADLINES

Dish (DISH) has given up on its bid for Sprint (S) due to a revised deal by Softbank (SFTBF.PK) which made it “impracticable” to submit a new offer by Sprint’s deadline. Dish is now shifting it’s compete focus on it’s proposal for Clearwire (CLWR), which will give Dish a minority stake in Clearwire. Dish will look to use this minority stake to obtain a network/spectrum deal. It appears that Softbank will end up with Sprint.

After its earnings report, Adobe (ADBE) shares have gone up 6.9% in the premarket, after its earnings-per-shares beat Wall Street’s expectation, coming in at $0.36. Net profit of the software company dropped to $76.5M from $223.9M from year-to-year. Revenue also saw a decrease from year to year, falling 10% to $1.01 billion. However, demand for Adobe’s flagship product, the Creative Cloud, saw an increase of 221,000 subscriptions, bringing g the total number of subscriptions to 700,000

Verizon (VZ) is showing interest in acquiring the Canadian mobile company Wind Mobile. Verizon has begun talks with the Canadian company, which is struggling in the Canadian market. Wind Mobile’s largest owner, VimpelCom (VIP), reportedly wants something in the range of $500 million, which after spectrum purchases, network upgrades, and consolidation costs could cost Verizon up to $1-$2 billion.

Obesity has now been voted to be recognized as a disease, by the American Medical Association, which could cause insurers to pay more for it, while categorizing a third of Americans as being ill. Some companies that could profit from the AMA’s announcement include Arena (ARNA), Vivus (VVUS), and Orexigen (OREX).

NewsCorp shares (NWS), which will split on June 28, have fallen 3% on their trading debut in Sydney, after already opening at $15, which was lower than expected for the company. 21st Century Fox, who makes up the other half of NewsCorp and still trades under the parent company’s name, also dropped 6.9%

Elon Musk, CEO of electric car company Tesla (TSLA), has announced over twitter that the company will be recalling 800 Model S vehicles. Although there have been no injuries or complaints on the car, it should be enough to cause a reaction in the volatile stock. Tesla is down 1.25% in the premarket, at $102.10

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