We're Increasing Our Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Price Targets
Plus, we're lifting panic points for four other holdings, and updating portfolio earnings expectations.
You've reached your free article limit
You've read 0 of 1 free Pro articles.
* We’re lifting our price targets and panic points for Bank of America and Morgan Stanley shares.
* We’re also updating our table of EPS expectations and paint points for our portfolio holdings.
* Calendar consensus EPS forecasts moved up for Nvidia and five other portfolio holdings while those for the S&P 500 edged lower.
* We’re lifting our panic points for Costco, Alphabet, Qualcomm, and Trade Desk shares.
Last week we shared we would be revisiting a few price targets and as we share the latest changes to calendar consensus EPS expectations and panic point levels for the portfolio’s holdings, we’re boosting these price targets: Bank of America BAC and Morgan Stanley MS to $41 and $105, respectively, from $39 and $100.
Those 5% boosts reflect improving prospects for net interest income (NII) following JPMorgan JPM boosting its 2024 NII guidance as well as improving prospects for investment banking revenue. We’ll continue to monitor the IPO market and other investment banking activity, which could lead us to revisit those price targets yet again.
As we make those adjustments, we’re also lifting our BAC panic point to $33 from $31 and increasing the one for MS shares to $83 from $78.
Now let’s get to those other EPS revisions and panic point adjustments.
Consensus Calendar EPS Expectations
Following its earnings last week, the market 2024 consensus for EPS at Applied Materials AMAT rose to $8.58 from $8.48. For 2025, the market now sees EPS of $9.89, up from $9.75 previously.
Labcorp’s LH expected earnings for this year now sits at $14.84, up slightly from $14.82, but 2025 expectations were revised to $15.92 from $15.86.
Mastercard’s MA consensus EPS for 2025 was boosted to $16.65 from $16.61.
Ahead of its earnings after Wednesday’s market close, we saw several price target increases this morning for Nvidia NVDA shares. Those moves had an impact on EPS expectations for the company, driving 2024 to $24.12 from $23.86, and 2025 to $31.84 from $30.97.
United Rentals URI received yet another boost with its 2024 EPS now expected to be $44.15, up from $43.94. For 2025 the market consensus now sees $47.76, up $0.06 per share.
We also saw some modest adjustments for 2024 and 2025 EPS for Vulcan Materials VMC to $8.67 and $10.07 from $8.64 and $10.00, respectively.
As we note these upward revisions, we would also share that calendar consensus EPS for the S&P 500 inched lower to $243.99 for this year from $244.12. With 7% of the S&P 500 basket left to report, including a batch of retailers, we will continue to watch earnings this week and its impact on 2024 expectations for this market basket. For 2025, the consensus EPS for the S&P 500 was little changed at $277.83 compared to $277.86 this time last week.
Portfolio Panic Points
We are lifting our panic point for Costco COST to $675 from $615 following the pronounced move in the shares.
Similarly, our Alphabet (GOOGL) panic point goes to $145 from $140 and our Qualcomm QCOM price target is now set to $160, up from $150.
The recent move in The Trade Desk TTD shares is leading us to boost our panic point for that holding to $79 from $75.
At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long BAC, MS, AMAT, LH, MA, NVDA, URI, VMC, COST, QCOM, TTD.
