6 big analyst picks & cuts: RingCentral stock jumps on upgrade & merger talks

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Here is your Pro Recap of the biggest analyst picks and cuts you may have missed since Friday: upgrades at RingCentral, Dollar General, UWM, and Hamilton Lane; downgrades at Equity Residential and Vertex.

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RingCentral (NYSE:RNG) shares jumped nearly 18% on Friday after Needham upgraded the company to Buy from Hold with a price target of $42.00 in response to surgical cost cuts and stabilized growth, as InvestingPro reported in real time.

The firm now sees RingCentral demonstrating its capacity to achieve over 20% operating margin which should provide ample FCF to pay down its sizable debt load.

In addition to the upgrade, share gains were tied to a 13D from Sylebra Capital showing an 8.7% stake and indicating it could seek talks on industry consolidation.

OTR Global upgraded Dollar General (NYSE:DG) to Positive from Mixed ahead of the upcoming Q1/24 earnings announcement on May 1.

Street estimates stand at $2.39 for EPS and $9.47 billion for revenues.

UWM (NYSE:UWMC) shares surged more than 5% on Friday after Jefferies upgraded to Buy from Hold and raised its price target to $7.00 from $5.50, noting that the company has accelerated market share gains through its “game on” pricing strategy.

According to the firm, the stickiness of market share gains while raising GOS margins should improve the go-forward EPS profile of UWM.

Earlier this month, the company reported its Q1 results, with a significant miss on EPS and revenues.

Oppenheimer upgraded Hamilton Lane (NASDAQ:HLNE) to Outperform from Perform with a price target of $87.00 following the company’s reported Q4 earnings. EPS came in at $0.96, better than the consensus of $0.79, while revenue of $112.79 million missed the consensus of $116.12M.

Raymond James downgraded Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR) to Underperform from Market Perform.

BofA Securities downgraded Vertex (NASDAQ:VERX) to Underperform from Neutral with a price target of $22.00.

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