Filed under: Analyst upgrades and downgrades, Yahoo! (YHOO), Merrill Lynch (MER)

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Merrill Lynch, Yahoo! and T Rowe Price were today’s noteworthy downgrades:

• Oppenheimer downgraded shares of Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) to Underperform from Perform on valuation and their negative outlook related to the monoline insurers given MER’s overall exposure to sub-prime mortgage related assets. The broker believes MER could have an additional write-down of $10B if the monolines were to be downgraded and that MER shares are valued more appropriately below $44.
• Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Citigroup and lowered their target to $22 from $33 to reflect the company’s continued share losses in the search market and uncertainty over 2008 investments. Oppenheimer lowered shares to Perform from Outperform and lowered their target to $20 from $30 to reflect the weaker than expected 2008 margin guidance.
• Friedman Billings downgraded T Rowe Price (NASDAQ: TROW) to Underperform from Market Perform and expects margin pressure in 2008.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• JP Morgan downgraded Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE: SMG) to Neutral from Overweight.
• UBS lowered Centex (NYSE: CTX) to Neutral from Buy.
• Merrill lowered American Campus (NYSE: ACC) to Neutral from Buy.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 5:04 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.