Analysts Suggest You Should Buy These Two Stocks but Hedge Funds Have Mixed Sentiments

With the U.S. stock market rallying following news of increased consumer confidence, the two stocks have also been boosted by a positive reaction to a new wave of analyst ratings. Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA) was awarded an ‘Outperform’ rating from analysts at Telsey Advisory Group, according to a new research report issued today. They also believe the stock could go as high as $225 per share. Sterne Agee CRT has also recently initiated coverage on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), with analysts believing the stock to be a ‘Buy’ and having set a price target of $150 per share. During the second quarter, hedge funds have become more attracted to Panera Bread, while Apple has lost some support, although it remained one of the most popular companies among the funds we track.

Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA)‘s stock managed to stage a rally recently, following the August market sell-off, and is up 8.57% so far this month. Barclays analysts are also bullish on this stock, having reiterated their Overweight rating at the end of July and a price target of $215, while Maxim Group believes the stock is a ‘Hold’. During the second quarter, the number of hedge funds holding a stake in Panera increased to 27, from 25 at the end of March, while the value of their aggregate positions surged by 52% to $562 million. Their investment also accounts for 12% of the company’s total outstanding stock.

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Luxor Capital Group holds the largest stake on Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA) among the hedge funds that we follow. Christian Leone, the fund’s manager, increased his stake in the company by 184% to 997,838 shares during the second quarter, while Israel Englander boosted his stake by 260% to amass 322,824 shares according to Millennium Management’s latest 13F filing. James Crichton, the manager of Hitchwood Capital Management, has decided to join the party as well and has initiated a stake in Panera Bread, stockpiling 350,000 shares by the end of the quarter.

Sterne Agee CRT analyst Rob Cihra has played down investor worries regarding iPhone sales in China and believes Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s sales will benefit from their installed customer base that will upgrade to the new devices. Cihra also thinks 2016 revenues could grow by an additional 4.0 percentage points on top of last year’s 19%, as a large portion of Apple customers have not yet switched to larger-screen iPhones.

“… we believe Apple can keep pushing out the law-of-large numbers as it creates its own growth and captures value from others by engineering innovative hardware+software+services in a vertically-integrated model,” said Cihra.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) remained the favorite stock of Carl Icahn, who owns 52.76 million shares and Philippe Laffont, who has further increased his holding of the stock by 12% during the second quarter, to amass 8.54 million shares. Cliff Asness is also bullish on this stock, with his fund, AQR Capital Management, reporting ownership of 7.61 million shares in its latest 13F filing. David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, a long term admirer of Apple, has chosen to trim his investment, reducing his fund’s ownership to 7.38 million shares at the end of June. In general, hedge fund bullishness on the Cupertino-based giant has cooled a bit during the second quarter, with the number of funds reporting long positions having decreased to 144 from 150 at the end of the first quarter. Their cumulative investment accounts for just 2.90% of Apple’s common stock and carried a value of $21.2 billion at the end of June.

Disclosure: none.