Why Traders Are Watching BHP, Applied Materials, Red Hat and Two Other Stocks on Thursday

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Nomura Gives Applied Materials A Boost

Shares of Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) have inched up by roughly 1.8% on Thursday, helped by a price target hike at Nomura. After attending a meeting with the company’s CFO and display chief, Nomura’s Romit Shah reiterated a Buy rating on the stock, while boosting his price target from $25 to $28. Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) saw the number of investors in our database long its stock drop by two to 39, over the first quarter. Among those that remained bullish were Harris Associates, with 39 million shares, and D. E. Shaw, which disclosed ownership of 8.83 million shares as of March 31.

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Amazon Gains On Upgrade, FedRAMP Authorization

Also on the rise on Thursday is Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which has advanced almost 1.2% today after Maxim Group initiated coverage on the stock with a ‘Buy’ rating and $825 price target. In other news, the company was fined $130,000 by the FAA on allegations that the eCommerce giant “mishandled” shipments of dangerous chemicals. A total of 133 funds tracked by Insider Monkey held shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of the first quarter, down from 141 in the previous quarter.

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Red Hat’s Earnings Call Disappoints Investors

Finally, there’s Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT), whose stock has tumbled 2.7% on Thursday, following the announcement of the company’s first quarter financial results on Wednesday afternoon. While sales of $567.9 million (up by 18.1% year-over-year) beat the Street’s consensus by $5.14 million, EPS of $0.50 were in-line with estimates. In addition, the company’s management said that the company would repurchase up to $1 billion of its common stock – instead of the originally planned $500 million, and that it had agreed to acquire 3scale, a leading application programming interface (API) management technology provider. At the end of March, 39 funds tracked by us were long Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) nd held 5% of its float at the end of March. The largest position was held by Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, which owned 1.02 million shares of the company, after increasing its exposure by 11% over the quarter.

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Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.

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