14 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar

11. Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT)

Number of Hedge Fund Holdings: 89

Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) is one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing equipment providers in the world. Its shares are up by 83% over the past year and by 18.8% year-to-date. Keybanc hiked the firm’s share price target to $380 from $285 and kept an Overweight rating on the shares in mid-January. The financial firm pointed out that even though Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT)’s shares had lagged in performance when compared to their peers, the performance was justified since the equipment manufacturer was exposed to older chip manufacturing processes. Deutsche Bank upgraded the shares to Buy from Hold and raised the share price target to $390 from $275 in January. The bank pointed out that Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), like other firms in its sector, can benefit from the growth in the wafer manufacturing equipment industry. RBC Capital also recently discussed the firm as it set an Outperform rating and a $385 share price target. As for Cramer, he discussed the sizable demand that Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) is experiencing:

“Okay, so, here’s the ones that have a shortage that can’t be met. . . Applied Materials. . .being semiconductor capital equipment. Those stocks are up . . .this is from the year began. . .Applied Material 26. . .”