Thursday’s Top Trending Tickers: MSFT, VOD, LB, BMRN, GLW

Goldman Sachs Upgrades Corning Incorporated

Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW)’s stock has gained just under 2% in early Thursday trading after investment firm Goldman Sachs upgraded the company to ‘Conviction Buy’. The firm is bullish on the glass and ceramics manufacturer due to a positive outlook of the overall glass industry. At the end of the first quarter of 2016, 31 funds in our database of 766 actively-reporting funds were bullish on Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW). Among them was John A. Levin’s Levin Capital Strategies, which owned approximately 13.26 million shares of the company.

Microsoft’s Cloud and Business Services Under One Platform

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is making headlines today after it announced that it will combine its CRM and ERP cloud products into a single bundle called Microsoft Dynamics 365. The bundle, which is due to be launched this fall, will package apps for sales, enterprise, finance and customer service, allowing companies to use Microsoft’s personal assistant Cortana, as well as other business intelligence and customer service tools through one platform. It is yet another effort by the company to revitalize its Cloud and enterprise business. Microsoft’s stock is up by 0.27% in morning trading.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was one of the most popular stocks among the funds tracked by Insider Monkey as of March 31. 144 hedge funds were bullish on the company, including Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Capital, which held 56.62 million Microsoft shares on that date.

Goldman Sachs Assigns GBX 260 Price Target to Vodafone

Vodafone Group Plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:VOD)’s stock has gained 0.37% this morning after shares of the company were given a GBX 260 ($3.45) price target by investment firm Goldman Sachs, which has a ‘Neutral’ rating on the mobile communications company. Last week, JPMorgan boosted its price target for Vodafone to GBX 300 ($3.99) from GBX 280 ($3.72) and has an ‘Overweight’ rating on the stock. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital is one of the 21 hedge funds in our system which have stakes in Vodafone Group Plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:VOD) as of the end of the first quarter.

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