Investing.com -- Here is your Pro Recap of the top takeaways from Wall Street analysts for the past week.
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Akamai Technology
What happened? On Monday, Morgan Stanley double upgraded Akamai Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:AKAM) to Overweight with a $115 price target.
*TLDR: Morgan Stanley now bullish on Akamai. Reinventing from CDN to cloud powerhouse.
What’s the full story? Morgan Stanley pulls a complete 180 on Akamai, catapulting the stock from Underweight straight to Overweight—a rare double-upgrade that screams "we blew it." The team’s watching a company desperately trying to reinvent itself from yesterday’s content delivery dinosaur into tomorrow’s cloud and security powerhouse, but here’s the rub: revenue growth has been flatlining at a pathetic 4-5% since COVID ended, with earnings crawling at the same snail’s pace since 2021.
The analysts previously bet against this transformation, figuring Akamai would burn cash for years trying to escape its dying legacy business while growth stayed in the doldrums. Now Morgan Stanley’s singing a different tune, convinced Akamai’s about to hit the promised land—that magical "inflection point" where the top line finally accelerates and earnings take off.
Whether this is prescient analysis or just Wall Street’s latest mood swing remains to be seen, but the team’s betting the company’s grinding reinvention is finally ready to pay dividends.
Target Corp.
What happened? On Tuesday, Gordon Haskett upgraded Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) to Buy with a $140 price target.
*TLDR: Target’s past four years bled market share. New CEO sparks contrarian recovery bet.
What’s the full story? Gordon Haskett upgrades Target to Buy from Hold, planting a $140 price target that screams over 30% upside from current levels. The last four-plus years gutted Brian Cornell’s reign: social distractions hogged the headlines while store execution and merchandising quietly collapsed, feeding market share to Costco, Walmart, and TJX like it was free lunch.
Enter the new sheriff, Michael Fiddelke. The stock—once king at $265 in ’21—finally bottoms in the low $100s. This smells like the late ’24/early ’25 turnarounds at Five Below, Dollar General, and Kohl’s: fresh C-suite blood, back-to-basics grit, and suddenly the numbers quit bleeding.
The analyst figures 4Q25 comps mark the nadir near -3.0%, then claw into low-single-digit growth through ’26/’27 on easy laps, sharper store focus, product newness, and macro tailwinds—cheaper gas, softer inflation, middle-to-upper income breathing room. No margin apocalypse looms; Target laps a buck of EPS pain from markdowns and tariffs while self-funding cuts (hello, 8% headcount trim) feed the engine. Gross margins lag the old ~29.5% average, leverage sits ready.
If same-stores truly bottom, the stock rerates on rising EPS and multiple expansion from today’s depressed 13x ’26 toward historical 16.5x norms. The Walmart spread—now a grotesque 27 points versus the old 9—looks unsustainable if fundamentals turn. New models spit $8.00 for ’26, $9.25 for ’27. The $140 target rides 15x that ’27 figure.
High risk, no hand-holding—classic contrarian play on a battered retailer rediscovering its pulse.
Rivian
What happened? On Wednesday, UBS downgraded Rivian Automotive Inc (NASDAQ:RIVN) to Sell with a $15 price target.
*TLDR: Rivian faces sharp downgrade risks. Stock could drop 20% to $15.
What’s the full story? UBS downgrades Rivian arguing the risk/reward has turned decisively unfavorable. The stock has ripped 15% higher since the December 11 Autonomy and AI Day—handily beating the S&P 500’s limp 1% gain—as Wall Street heaps fresh excitement on Rivian’s AI storyline. Yet the bank sees most of the AI news already priced in, with little left to ignite another leg higher.
Enthusiasm also centers on the R2 launch, and while UBS likes the vehicle, expectations look wildly overcooked. The bank’s 2026 and 2027 sales forecasts run 16% and 19% below consensus, while current prices bake in 2027 revenue about 25% above its own estimates.
In the base case, the bank projects roughly 20% downside to $15, with the skew ugly: downside risk outweighs upside potential by about 1.6 to 1.
ASML
What happened? On Thursday, RBC initiated coverage on ASML Holding NV (AS:ASML) at Outperform with a $1,550 price target,
*TLDR: ASML crushes SOX in 2025, GenAI roars on. RBC sees tight supply, vanished premium, criminal risk/reward.
What’s the full story? ASML stomps the SOX in 2025 as wafer-fab cash finally stops pretending to be dead and EUV chews through reality like it owns the place. RBC figures the racket keeps roaring into 2026–27, fueled by GenAI’s bottomless appetite that no one dares call a bubble yet.
DRAM supply stays Sahara-dry, EUV stacks grow taller than regulators’ egos, and if Samsung ever remembers how to ship HBM4, the chain lights up like a bad idea on margin. Logic nodes race toward insanity for accelerators while foundry cowboys dust off their six-shooters. China? Mostly smoke and mirrors now. Services print double-digit growth like it’s their constitutional right. The once-obscene valuation premium has melted away;
ASML no longer struts like royalty. Risk/reward suddenly smells downright criminal.
Yeti Holdings
What happened? On Friday, Keybanc upgraded YETI Holdings Inc (NYSE:YETI) to Overweight with a $57 price target.
*TLDR: YETI’s supply chain awakens, comps ease, growth destiny beckons. International surges near 20%, coolers thrive, margins quietly tease upside.
What’s the full story? Keybanc upgrades YETI to Overweight with a $57 price target. The supply chain quits playing dead, easier comps arrive like a overdue paycheck, and the long-term algo—high-single to low-double-digit top-line growth—suddenly looks less like fiction and more like destiny.
The firm watches U.S. drinkware stabilize after a year of pretending scarcity is a strategy, while international revenue hits escape velocity near 20% of the pie and coolers keep finding new ways to justify their price tags. International’s 50/50 DTC-wholesale split (versus the group’s 60/40) dangles obvious margin upside as the footprint spreads.
At ~19.4x FY26 EPS the target sits below the peer pack’s 22.5x—almost polite, really—setting the stage for the kind of quiet upside that sneaks up and ruins shorts’ weekends.
