(This is CNBC Pro’s live coverage of Thursday’s analyst calls and Wall Street chatter. Please refresh every 20-30 minutes to view the latest posts.) A retail giant and a bank were among the stocks being talked about by analysts on Thursday. Oppenheimer raised its price target on Walmart to $75, reiterating its outperform rating on shares. Jefferies, meanwhile, upgraded Capital One Financial to buy from neutral. Elsewhere, Citi upgraded eBay to buy from neutral, calling for more than 20% upside. Check out the latest calls and chatter below. All times ET. 8 a.m.: MoffettNathanson downgrades Shopify Shopify may already be the dominant player in its corner of the e-commerce world, but that’s going to make further growth tough to come by, according to MoffettNathanson. Analyst Michael Morton downgraded the stock to neutral from buy, saying in a note to clients that the cost of further growth will hurt Shopify’s margins in the medium term. “All good things must come to an end. In Shopify’s case, it ends with increasing customer acquisition spend as the company laps the FY22/23 merchant cohorts and merchant churn requires Shopify to continuously feed the funnel,” the note said. Morton also lowered the price target on the stock to $65 per share from $74. The new target is just 6% above where the stock closed Wednesday. Shares of Shopify are already down 21% year to date. — Jesse Pound 7:40 a.m.: BMO Capital Markets upgrades beaten-down Rubrik stock on attractive valuation Investors should buy the dip in cloud data management company Rubrik, BMO Capital markets said. Analyst Keith Bachman upgraded shares to outperform, saying the stock has reached a more favorable recent risk/reward profile in recent weeks and that the company’s “valuation is attractive relative to its growth potential.” His $40 price target implies 27.4% potential upside for the stock. “We view Rubrik as a leading data security vendor that can uniquely fill the gap between backup and security markets. We think Rubrik can sustain low to mid-20% y/y ARR growth over the next few years as both data volumes and security threats grow,” Bachman said, adding that Rubrik should be able to exceed his annual recurring revenue estimates by a few points per quarter. — Pia Singh 7:39 a.m.: Citi cites Family Dollar sale announcement as one reason for Dollar Tree downgrade Several near-term obstacles are clouding Dollar Tree’s outlook, according to Citi. The bank downgraded shares of the discount store retailer to a neutral rating from buy. Analyst Paul Lejuez also slashed his target price to $120 from $163. Shares of Dollar Tree have already slipped 19% this year, and Lejuez’s forecast implies that they have a mere 5% upside to go. As one reason for the downgrade, Lejuez pointed to the company’s recent announcement that it was exploring a sale of its Family Dollar brand, which it acquired in 2015. Lejuez had previously believed that bringing in CEO Rick Dreiling could help “pick the low hanging fruit within the Family Dollar biz, helping to improve sales productivity and drive higher profitability.” However, it’s obvious that this option is becoming less of a possibility. “While the FD turnaround has been on shaky ground for several qtrs, we believe the decision to explore strategic alternatives shows that mgmt lacks confidence in the FD fix, signaling more structural issues than previously expected,” the analyst wrote. Meanwhile, Lejuez also wrote that while he believes that Dollar Tree’s venture into introducing multi-price points was always the right move, the execution hasn’t gone as smoothly as hoped. “With the strong DT biz falling short of comp plan in 1Q, and the rollout of multi-price points facing a learning curve, the story is becoming more complicated in a still uncertain consumer environment, making the risk/reward more balanced, in our view,” he added. — Lisa Kailai Han 7:36 a.m.: Citi sees 20% upside ahead for eBay Citi has turned positive on eBay , upgrading it to buy from neutral after a period of rating suspension. Its price target of $64 suggests nearly 21% upside from Wednesday’s close. The bank sees an improved growth outlook, return to margin expansion and upside to earnings-per-share estimates from anticipated stock buybacks. “We see more evidence that growth investments are paying off with Focus Category growth meaningfully outpacing other categories and expect more impact as these become a larger part of the mix,” analyst Ygal Arounian wrote in a note Thursday. “Other platform improvements like GenAI are also helping.” Despite this improving outlook, the stock is still trading below historical averages, he said. Shares are up nearly 22% year to date. — Michelle Fox 6:31 a.m.: Goldman maintains buy rating on ASML, says company is ‘irreplicable’ in AI buildout Bank of America is increasingly confident on ASML’s revenue outlook for next year. Analyst Didier Scemama reiterated his buy rating on ASML — the world’s largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer — and kept his roughly $1416 price target on the stock, which implies about 25% potential increase for shares. This year, the stock has advanced 37.6%. Scemama lifted his estimates for 2025 and 2026 revenue and also hiked his earnings estimates to reflect higher confidence in higher demand for ASML’s EUV lithography systems as well as higher gross margin. “ASML remains irreplicable in the buildout of AI infrastructure with all AI processor and DRAM companies using EUV technology to manufacture their chips,” the analyst said in a Thursday note. “While some concerns remain about foundry orders through the end of this year, we believe that the pace of investment from all leading hyperscalers and enterprise customers in AI infrastructure leaves very doubt that significant capacity needs to be added at the leading edge.” — Pia Singh 6:19 a.m.: Nvidia continues to be ‘industry standard’ with long-term growth potential, Goldman says Goldman Sachs remains bullish on Nvidia’s future competitive advantage. Analyst Toshiya Hari maintained his buy rating on the stock, which is also on the firm’s North America conviction list, after he attended a group meeting with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during this year’s Computex tech exhibition in Taiwan. Although he walked away from the meeting with positive sentiment on the stock, his 12-month price target of $1,200 implies a 2% decrease from its latest close. Shares have skyrocketed about 147.2% this year. NVDA YTD mountain NVDA year to date “We continue to view Nvidia as the industry standard and key enabler as it pertains to accelerating computing required for Gen AI development/deployment, and we see significant upside potential to Street consensus estimates,” Hari said in a Wednesday note. He noted Nvidia’s shift towards being an accelerated computing provider rather than a chip provider and the company’s scale advantage as catalysts for the stock. — Pia Singh 6 a.m.: United Airlines could climb another 32%, according to Redburn Atlantic Redburn Atlantic analyst James Goodall upgraded United Airlines to buy, choosing the airline as its top pick among peers as the overall outlook for airlines becomes disparate. “The growing divergence in performance of the US carriers suggests differences in strategy, markets and customer mix will continue to favor certain players,” Goodall said in a Thursday note. “While falling fuel prices favor all, exposure to the most resilient pockets of demand and a better supply/demand balance should enable both Delta and United to outperform expectations.” Goodall’s $70 price target implies 32.3% potential upside for the stock, which has advanced 28.2% this year already. He attributed his bullish investment thesis to his updated earnings forecast, combined with lower capex that he thinks should drive strong free cash flow generation for United. — Pia Singh 5:42 a.m.: Jefferies upgrades Capital One Financial Capital One Financial is a “win-win” investment by itself or when combined with Discover Financial, according to Jefferies. Analyst John Hecht upgraded the banking stock to buy from neutral. His price target of $165, up from $145, implies upside of nearly 22% over the next 12 months. “Standalone, we see upside given forward-thinking strategic positioning, which has resulted in COF being ahead of the curve in credit performance and in a position to lean into markets such as auto,” Hecht wrote. “The DFS opportunity is transformative, accretive, and provides optionality adding to the potential upside.” Capital One announced in February it will acquire Discover Financial for more than $35 billion. The deal is expected to close late this year or early 2025. Shares of Capital One have lagged this year, rising just 3.3%. COF YTD mountain — Fred Imbert 5:42 a.m.: Oppenheimer hikes price target on Walmart, supports premium valuation for shares Walmart shares are still positioned for steady outperformance, according to Oppenheimer. Analyst Rupesh Parikh reiterated his outperform rating and lifted his price target by $6 to $75, which suggests shares could climb 11.8%. This year, the stock is up 27.7%, outperforming the S & P 500 by a wide margin. “We expect a multi-year profit boom to continue driven by strong management execution, momentum in WMT’s core geographies, and further scaling of higher margin alternative revenue streams (media, membership, marketplace, etc),” Parikh wrote in a Thursday note. Walmart already proved these efforts successfully in the first quarter, during which they had sales growth of 6% and operating income growth of roughly 14%, Parikh added. Moving forward, he expects the retailer to continue posting strong levels of profit growth, supporting a premium valuation for shares. Parikh also expects a continued positive tone from Walmart’s management on driving alternative revenue streams and margin expansion, using the benefits of automation, for example. Coupled with grocery store gains and increasing international footprint, the analysts expects Walmart to boast about 4% sales growth on average and operating income growth of more than 4% over time. WMT YTD mountain WMT year to date — Pia Singh
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