Unfortunately, just because a stock analyst works on Wall Street doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is a good stock piker. However, the three best analysts in the business are bullish on Honeywell (HON), SEI Investments (SEIC) and Community Health Systems (CYH).
Honeywell (HON)
TipRanks ranks Oppenheimer analyst Christopher Glynn as the top-performing Wall Street analyst out of the 3893 analysts on its platform. Glynn has a 74% success rate on his more than 450 stock picks and is averaging a 15.7% return per recommendation.
Back in December, Glynn reiterated his “Buy” rating on HON and upped his price target to $120.
In October, Glynn praised the company for its “solid mix of secular drivers” and “above-average multi-year revenue opportunities.”
It’s easy to look at HON’s size, solid earnings and 2.1% dividend and assume that the blue chip company likely has few game-changing catalysts ahead. However, nearly half of its engineering staff is currently working on developing software to help ensure that HON is at the forefront of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) revolution that many expect will be a multi-billion opportunity in coming years. In fact, HON itself projects that about 60% of its aerospace sales will include embedded software by 2020.
SEI Investments (SEIC)
If you thought Glynn’s track record was impressive, wait until you see the numbers for TipRanks’ number two-rated analyst. Oppenheimer’s Glenn Greene has an 81% success rate and averages a 21.5% return per recommendation. In fact, if Greene had made as many total picks as Glynn, he would likely be the site’s top-ranked stock picker.
Last week, Greene reiterated his “Buy” rating and $52 price target for SEIC.
Greene has been a fan of SEIC for a while. In fact, in 2015 Greene named SEIC his top pick and praised the company’s “profitable and highly-recurring business model.”
The stock is down 7.1% so far in 2016 in a very sluggish financial sector, but Greene believes that investors should be taking the opportunity to buy the dip. Just this week, the company even announced that it had bumped its share repurchase program by $200 million. SEIC has bought back 2.1 million shares so far in 2016 and now has more than $232 million authorized for additional purchases.
Community Health Systems (CYH)
Analyst Michael Wiederhorn completes Oppenheimer’s clean sweep of the top three spots in the TipRanks Wall Street analyst rankings. Wiederhorn has a 68% success rate on his more than 480 stock picks and is averaging a 18.3% return per recommendation.
About two months ago, Wiederhorn reiterated his “Buy” rating and $35 price target for CYH. The healthcare sector has been hit hard in recent months, and CYH is down 24% year-to-date.
Wiederhorn sees the CYH sell-off as a buying opportunity. Last year he called CYH “a well-run company, with high-quality markets and a long-standing track record of recognizing gains from the acquisition market.”
A large portion of the sell-off came following CYH’s lackluster Q4 earnings report in February. Despite a potentially troubling increase in allowance for doubtful accounts, CEO Wayne Smith remained optimistic about the company’s physician recruitment, operational initiatives and expense management.
Disclosure: As of this writing, Wayne Duggan had no positions in any of the stocks mentioned.
