These Stocks Were Upgraded This Morning And Hedge Funds Couldn’t Agree More

AbbVie Inc (NYSE:ABBV) received the upgrade treatment from Citigroup, which replaced its ‘Sell’ rating on the stock with a ‘Neutral’ one. Citi has a $60 price target on the stock, which has fallen from over $70 to just $54 over the past two months. Hedge funds are excited about AbbVie’s potential however, with billionaire healthcare investor Larry Robbins believing that the biopharmaceutical company was trading at a notable discount to 2016 and 2017 projected earnings, even before the latest decline of shares. Robbins increased his holding in AbbVie Inc (NYSE:ABBV) by 631% during the second quarter to 17.86 million shares, making it his third-largest holding overall. 79 hedge funds owned $6.11 billion of the company’s shares on June 30, a marked increase from 72 and $3.29 billion respectively on March 31.

The final ratings update we’ll discuss comes courtesy of Jefferies, as it initiated coverage on Newell Rubbermaid Inc. (NYSE:NWL) with a ‘Buy’ rating and $50 price target. It also added the stock to its ‘Franchise Pick’ list. Jefferies analyst Kevin Grundy cites strong earnings growth potential as one of the reasons behind the bullish call, with the potential for double-digit earnings growth through the 2018 fiscal year. Despite the bullish call from Jefferies, shares are trading down by over 2% so far this morning. Hedge funds in our database were also bullish on this stock in the second quarter, increasing the value of their collective holdings by over 40% to $460 million, though they still held just 4.20% of its outstanding shares. Among the bullish investors of Newell Rubbermaid Inc. (NYSE:NWL) were Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Malcolm Fairbairn’s Ascend Capital, each of which opened new positions during the second quarter.

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