Here are Thursday’s biggest calls on Wall Street: Edward Jones upgrades CVS to buy from hold The firm said the stock is an “attractive turnaround story.” “We are upgrading shares of CVS Health (CVS) to a Buy rating from a Hold. We believe CVS could be an attractive turnaround story with the potential for new management improving in its health insurance division, Aetna.” Stifel upgrades Edward Lifesciences to buy from hold Stifel said the heart value medical innovations solutions company has upside. “We are upgrading EW shares to Buy, from Hold, and increasing our price target to $90, from $75.” Bernstein upgrades Lam Research to outperform from market perform The firm upgraded the semicap stock following Wednesday’s earnings report. “We think risk-reward is skewing positive enough here; we upgrade LRCX to Outperform.” Goldman Sachs upgrades RH to neutral from sell Goldman said it sees the furniture company turning free-cash flow positive in the future. “We are upgrading RH to Neutral from Sell, given 1) a shift in demand trends despite a depressed housing environment, driven by new product and heavy marketing (i.e., sourcebooks, increase in advertising dollars); 2) a change in its supply chain, reducing exposure to China and Mexico…” HSBC upgrades Corning to buy from hold HSBC upgraded the glassware company following earnings due to “solid top-line growth.” ” Corning’s 4Q24 financial results came in 3-4% ahead of our and consensus estimates. Jefferies upgrades Coca-Cola to buy from hold Jefferies called Coca-Cola “quality at a refreshing price.” “The business is in great shape. Volumes are compounding, pricing has been earned, and cash flow is about to inflect… meaningfully.” Morgan Stanley reiterates Nvidia as overweight Analyst Joseph Moore said he’s sticking with shares of Nvidia despite the stock’s selloff and says demand for the company’s chips remains robust. “He also reiterated that the underlying demand for Nvidia Blackwell – and other AI products – remains strong.” Bank of America reiterates Meta as buy Following the company’s earnings report on Wednesday, the firm said the “Al monetization cycle [is] still in early stages” for Meta. “We think a higher multiple is justified as Meta’s Al driven ad improvements are still early (rev. upside), while Meta is building big AI assets with an internal Al supercomputer, inhouse LLM [large language model] and custom Al chips to leverage massive Facebook, Instagram and messaging user pools.” Bernstein names Core Scientific as a top pick Bernstein said the bitcoin miner offers “ready ‘power access’ and [a] data center buildout.” ” CORZ is down ~30% on the back of the “DeepSeek’ dislocation. We have been bullish on AI-focused Bitcoin miners.” Bank of America reiterates IBM as buy Bank of America said it sees further upside for the stock following earnings on Wednesday. “IBM reported a strong F4Q with revs/EPS slightly above Street expectations with GM [gross margin] expanding to 60.6%, a new high driven by higher software mix.” Morgan Stanley reiterates Tesla as overweight Morgan Stanley said it’s sticking by Tesla shares following earnings on Wednesday and that the results were not “narrative changing.” “4Q results were mostly disappointing, but not particularly narrative changing. Consensus may fall modestly.” Morgan Stanley reiterates Microsoft as overweight The firm said that despite disappointing numbers for Microsoft’s cloud computing division, Azure, it was sticking with the stock. “While Azure was disappointing, strength in the GenAI ramp vs moderating capex growth should support accelerating FY26 FCF growth, keeping us OW.” Bank of America upgrades Blackline to buy from underperform Bank of America said fundamentals are improving for the software company. “We are upgrading accounting automation software vendor BlackLine (BL) to Buy (from Underperform) and raising our PO to $75 (from $50). Three months after announcing a new business strategy (more below), we deduce that BlackLine finally has the right technology and pricing/packaging in place to drive accelerating revenue growth which should be a catalyst.” Benchmark upgrades Meta to buy from hold The firm upgraded the stock following Wednesday’s earnings. “We are upgrading META shares to a Buy on a strong ’25E core business outlook, expecting flow-through of accelerating 4Q pricing and user engagement.”
