Filed under: Analyst upgrades and downgrades

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Financial Guarantors, Philips Electronics and Fannie Mae were today’s noteworthy downgrades:

• Banc of America downgraded the Financial Guarantors to Neutral from Overweight, including AMBAC Fin’l (NYSE:ABK), MBIA Inc (NYSE:MBI) and Security Capital Assurance (NYSE:SCA) to Neutral from Buy, due to concerns of slowing economic growth and the rising potential for losses. They believe the bond insurers are in the “perfect storm” of a deteriorating macro-environment, rising write-downs in the financial sector and a sharp housing downturn.
• Lehman lowered its rating on Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG) to Underweight from Overweight, as they see risk to 2008 earnings due to “optimistic” growth expectations amid a weaker macroeconomic environment.
• Morgan Stanley downgraded Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) to Underweight from Equal Weight, as they believe the company may increase guidance for credit losses.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• Merrill downgraded Agilent (NYSE:A) to Neutral from Buy.
• JP Morgan removed Kraft (NYSE:KFT) and Sara Lee (NYSE:SLE) from its Focus List.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.