3 Stocks to Watch on Thursday: FireEye Inc (FEYE), Facebook Inc (FB) and Micron Technology, Inc. (MU)

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Wednesday proved to be a mixed day for U.S. equities as they recovered from Tuesday’s thrashing. While the S&P 500 Index gained 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite improved by 0.5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was trimmed fractionally.

3 Stocks to Watch on Thursday: FireEye (FEYE), Facebook (FB) and Micron (MU)Heading into Thursday, big tech is taking the spotlight — but the biggest headlines are company news and upgrades, and nothing from the earnings bin. (Yet.) Right now, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), FireEye Inc (NASDAQ:FEYE) and Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) are all on the move.

Here’s why.

FireEye (FEYE)

FEYE shares were up big in Thursday’s early morning trading after earning an upgrade from Goldman Sachs.

In the newest analyst rating, FEYE shares were brought up all the way from “Sell” to “Buy,” including a raised price target of $15, from $10. The new price target represents roughly 30% upside from current prices.

Goldman is particularly bullish on the new Helix security platform, which “addresses many of FireEye’s previous challenges by reducing total cost of ownership by 33-50 pct.”

This follows an upgrade from Bank of America a couple days ago, sparked largely by guidance from FireEye that says growth will return in the second half of this year. BofA gushed about the company’s incident response and remediation service, and thinks the company has “substantially” reduced the channel partner conflict.

Nearly 18% of the float is sold short in FEYE, so short covering may be helping to propel some of Thursday’s gains.

FEYE stock was up some 7% before Thursday’s bell.

Facebook (FB)

Facebook is showing just how powerful monetization could become in image-based social media with a bold new statistic out of its Instagram app.

Specifically, users for the photo- and video-sharing app have rocketed to 1 million active advertisers — four times the roughly 200,000 the app boasted last year. The surge has come alongside efforts to get businesses to launch “dedicated business profiles” — essentially, profiles that act as marketing campaign centers for businesses.

Instagram says that four out of every five of its users now follows at least one of these new profiles, and that more than 120 million users “visited a website, got directions, called, emailed or direct messaged to learn about a business.”

Instagram, which Facebook is increasingly using to counter technologies offered by rival Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP), now boasts 600 million monthly active users.

FB shares were up fractionally Thursday morning.

Micron Technology (MU)

MU shares are up in early Thursday action, just one trading day separated from the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings report.

Wall Street’s expectations? On the top line, analysts are looking mostly for revenues in a range of $4.5 billion and $4.7 billion, with the consensus sitting around $4.6 billion. Meanwhile, bottom-line marks sit anywhere between 62 cents and 89 cents per share, though the average estimate is 80 cents per share.

Funnily, despite a nearly 20% gain so far in 2017, Instinet’s Romit Shaw a few days ago reiterated a “Buy” rating on shares, saying that the valuation is “depressed.” He wrote:

“We are estimating operating margin of 26% in the May period, which per our regression (R squared 0.82), should translate into a multiple of 2.7x book or $32 per share. MU shares though are trading at 1.7x book or $26 per share today.”

Moreover, Shaw says the market is “underappreciating a better cost structure, which also drives operating margin.”

MU stock is sitting roughly 2% higher this morning.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2017/03/3-stocks-to-watch-on-thursday-fireeye-feye-facebook-fb-and-micron-mu/.

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