The mayor of Londongrad has left the building
For years, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has quite literally made himself comfortable in London’s upper echelons of society. His £100mn-plus Kensington Palace Gardens mansion sits on land leased from the British monarchy.
But now the stately home sits empty, along with Abramovich’s Thames-side penthouse, helicopters, yachts and cars as the UK government imposed a full asset freeze and travel ban upon the businessman and six other Russian oligarchs.
Though the pitchside action continues at Abramovich’s most famous asset — Chelsea football club — the team can no longer sell as much as a ticket or a blues’ jersey at the club shop while the sanctions are in place.
The asset freeze has plunged a potential sale of Chelsea into legal limbo — with billionaire and former top Apollo Global Management executive Josh Harris among those considering taking the club off Abramovich’s hands.
UK officials said a deal couldn’t continue as planned, but that the government could consider granting a new licence to permit a disposal if Abramovich was able to demonstrate that he would not receive any of the proceeds. (Look out for more on the chaos unfolding at Chelsea in the FT’s Scoreboard newsletter tomorrow, and subscribe here if you haven’t already.)
A mansion owned by Roman Abramovich in London. On Thursday, the UK became the first country to slap sanctions on the Russian billionaire © Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images
The UK government has also accused London-listed steelmaker Evraz, in which Abramovich is the largest shareholder, of “undermining and threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence” of Ukraine and “potentially supplying steel to the Russian military which may have been used in the production of tanks”.
The company’s shares were quickly suspended by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority following Thursday’s sanctions, “pending clarification of the impact”. Evraz was not directly sanctioned and denied the claims, saying it did not make steel for Russia’s military. It also sought to distance itself from Abramovich, who it did not consider “as a person exercising . . . effective control of the company” — despite him holding a 28.6 per cent stake in the steelmaker.
The UK’s crackdown on Abramovich, who was described by lawmakers as a “pro-Kremlin oligarch” that held close links to Vladimir Putin, marks a stunning departure from the billionaire’s lucrative 20-year run as the proverbial mayor of Londongrad.
Abramovich, who amassed the majority of his estimated £9bn fortune after selling oil group Sibneft to Russia’s Gazprom in 2005, has spent the past two decades being lauded by politicians, financiers and football fans as he poured wealth into London’s financial system.
For now, UK lawmakers have pulled the plug.
The great NFT sell-off: has the digital collectibles craze hit its peak?
Value of digital tokens drops by almost 50 per cent, renewing doubts over hype-fuelled market
Internet collectibles ranging from cartoon apes to artsy doodles have plunged in value as real-world conflict and a broader cryptocurrency slump begins to unwind one of the past year’s biggest speculative frenzies.
Digital items known as non-fungible tokens burst into mainstream culture last year, as several animal collections including Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats and Pudgy Penguins spiked in price, aided by celebrity endorsements and social media hype. By the end of 2021, nearly $41bn had been spent on NFTs — making the market almost as valuable as the global art market.
But almost as rapidly, large portions of the market have begun to deteriorate, leaving novice investors with big losses and raising questions about the long term outlook for NFTs.
The average selling price of an NFT has dropped more than 48 per cent since a November peak to around $2,500 over the past two weeks, according to data from the website NonFungible.
Daily trading volumes on OpenSea, the biggest marketplace for NFTs, have plummeted 80 per cent to roughly $50mn in March, just a month after they reached a record peak of $248mn in February.
Meanwhile, the number of accounts buying and selling NFTs on a weekly basis has fallen to about 194,000, according to NonFungible. The number of accounts hit a peak of 380,000 last November.
By the end of last year “there was a general sense that there was saturation in certain parts of the market, particularly in primate-themed profile pictures”, said Nadya Ivanova, chief operating officer at L’Atelier, a trend-forecasting unit of French bank BNP Paribas.
“I think that many will be scarred and burnt by this market and may never touch NFTs again,” said a 19-year-old investor in a Telegram messaging group where more than 1,000 people discuss NFTs. Other members joked they would be living off rice, porridge and grass this month.
According to a Financial Times analysis of OpenSea, the average price of a Bored Ape NFT, a collection that counts celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Snoop Dogg as owners, has fallen 44 per cent since the war in Ukraine began as investors pull back from trading colourful cartoons.
One “blue-chip” NFT index offered by Bitwise has fallen 25 per cent in the past month, leaving it down 17.1 per cent for the year. Bored Apes and CryptoPunks, two of the most popular and richly valued collections, made up more than 60 per cent of the index as of this week.
NFTs represent unique ownership rights in a wide universe of online valuables including works of art, digital trading cards and gaming items hosted on the blockchain, digital ledgers that underpin cryptocurrencies such as ethereum. The rising popularity of NFTs showing so-called PFPs, or profile pictures, sent the market into overdrive last year.
The market’s pullback has mirrored a broader sell-off in Ether, the dominant cryptocurrency used to purchase NFTs, which has fallen more than 40 per cent from an all-time high in November. Many projects in decentralised finance and other areas tied to ethereum have also plummeted in value.
Despite the recent sell-off, some analysts believe it is too early to call a top in the market, which has attracted a flood of venture capital and given rise to several billion-dollar companies, including OpenSea and the NFT developers Dapper Labs and Sorare.
“The number of buyers is still higher than the number of sellers,” said BNP Paribas’ Ivanova. “We are not at the point of a bubble bursting.”
Several large collectors said they had no plans to slow down their purchases and viewed NFTs as an important technology for a new vision of the web, organised by cryptocurrencies.
“There has been so much noise and scams in the NFT space, this crypto winter gives the sector time to build technology that works and to educate,” said Fanny Lakoubay, a cryptocurrency art and NFT adviser. “This industry is still very much under construction.”
Some collectors said the market appeared to be dividing between relatively stable “blue-chip” NFTs and more common or speculative projects with little value beyond trading.
One Discord user, who calls themselves Lurmley, said they bought a Cool Cat last weekend when the average price on OpenSea had dropped from 17 ether at the end of January to less than 8 ether — which is worth $2,591 today — believing that the collection would be one of the few to survive the current shakeout.
The value of rare Origin and Mystic digital monsters in the popular video game Axie Infinity has “remained steady” even as the entry price for common Axies has fallen from $300 to $25, said Aleksander Larsen, chief operating officer of the game’s developer Sky Mavis.
Flamingo DAO, a collective of cryptocurrency enthusiasts that owns more than 4,000 NFTs, recently brought in large investors as new members, including the Los Angeles-based private equity firm The Chernin Group, valuing the two-year-old organisation at roughly $1bn.
While the sell-off has affected other parts of the market, Flamingo’s portfolio “hasn’t moved that much in terms of value”, said Aaron Wright, a member who helped form the DAO. Instead of slowing down purchases, the group has been speeding up, he said.
Cracks have begun to show elsewhere in the high-end NFT market. Last month, the owner of more than 100 CryptoPunks with an estimated value of $20mn to $30mn suddenly decided to pull the lot from an auction at Sotheby’s. The owner said he decided to “hodl”, cryptocurrency slang for hanging on to an investment for the long term.
“Is this a pause before a resurgence in a month or two? I suspect so,” said Mark Chrystal, founder of Bored Capital Club, a collective that invests in Bored Apes. “I don’t think we are seeing the end of the NFT market, but perhaps we are seeing the end of the beginning.”
After Hours Summary: DOCU -16.9%, ZUMZ -16.6%, RIVN -13.2%, AOUT -11.9% fall on earnings; ORCL bounces back after initial fall following earnings; LAZY +20.3% higher on acquisition proposalAfter Hours Gainers:
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: ALTO +15.1%, LOCO +6.7% (also names new CEO), NAPA +3.6%, ULTA +1.4% (also authorizes a new $2.0 bln share repurchase program), MLNK +0.2% (also to acquire StreetShares), ORCL +0.2%
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: LAZY +20.3% (RILY proposes to acquire LAZY for $25/sh; also discloses 8.6% stake in LAZY), MAPS +4% (names new chairman), IRNT +0.4% (stock offering)
After Hours Losers:
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: TLYS -21.6%, DOCU -16.9% (also authorizes up to $200 mln for share repurchases), ZUMZ -16.6%, AVO -14.1%, RIVN -13.2%, AOUT -11.9% (also announces acquisition of Grilla Grills), SHLS -7.3% (also announces opening of new manufacturing facility), ISPO -6.9%, BLNK -6.3%, WPM -1.1%
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: SQNS -10.3% (launches public offering of ADSs), AGNC -0.5% (announces estimated tangible net book value of $13.48/sh), FDX -0.3% (CEO to retire, names new CEO), PTON -0.3% (hires Chief Supply Chain Officer), AMK -0.1% (reports company highlights for February)
Boycotting Russian Culture Doesn’t Help Ukraine
Cutting ties with artists and writers risks compounding the dehumanization it means to protest.
“Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals.” So states the PEN Charter, a manifesto that guides an international movement of authors dedicated to defending the freedom to write. The Charter was adopted in 1948, alongside the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a dawning moment for the liberal international system. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine has not only rattled that system but also challenged the position of arts and literature as an international common denominator. Cultural organizations have felt impelled not simply to proclaim solidarity with Ukraine but also to draw up bridges, curtailing engagement with Russian artists.
Cultural outlets owe patrons, partners and audiences a conscientious response to international violence, mindful of how their decisions can shape perceptions, inflame passions and play into political agendas. The impulse to stigmatize and disavow all things Russian is an understandable reaction to brazen aggression; it is a gesture of solidarity with besieged counterparts. But a wholesale boycott spanning music, theater, art, films and books—and their creators—risks compounding the authoritarianism and dehumanization that it intends to protest.
Making elites suffer disgrace and deprivation, the theory goes, will reshape leaders’ incentives.
Conceptually, the case for cultural boycott derives from the arguments for sanctioning wrongdoers. Imposed cultural isolation aims to raise the cost of violent transgression so that it burdens daily life. Making elites suffer disgrace and deprivation, the theory goes, will reshape leaders’ incentives. Though scholars debate its influence, the most oft-cited example is the cultural boycott of South Africa, which is said to have led some whites to begin to turn on apartheid.
But cultural ostracism lacks the hard bite of financial sanctions or airspace restrictions. No one believes that cancelling Russian soprano Anna Netrebko’s appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, delaying the Russian release of “The Batman,” or withholding American books from Russian shelves will ward Mr. Putin off Kyiv. Amid images of fleeing children shot dead, cultural boycott is less an act of coercion than of conscience. Pangs over Ukraine’s fate fuel a primal urge to stand with its defenders.
Some Ukrainian filmmakers and literary organizations have called for comprehensive boycotts of Russian films and books as cultural propaganda, and the withholding of Western creative works from Russia. As much as we might empathize with such maximalist demands, they fail to take full account of the ethical and practical complexities of the case. As with recent demands to defund the police or abolish ICE amid our domestic upheavals, such calls should be heard not as literal policy prescriptions but as cries from the heart that demand heedful response.
We must not engage blithely with Russian culture in wartime, but that does not mean we shouldn’t engage at all. The insistence that all art is political, or politically uniform, is as false as the notion that art can be fully severed from politics. Artistic freedom implies the ability to defy dogma, break precedent and challenge authority. To ascribe Mr. Putin’s nihilist brutality to every Russian filmmaker, diva or author denies the essence of art, and of human agency itself. Freedom of thought is the chance to voice your own ideas. It is also a shield against having the opinions of others imputed to you against your will.
Authoritarians aspire to turn artists and intellectuals into tools of the state. For the world to conflate art and agitprop plays into Mr. Putin’s hands. Meanwhile, the growing number of Russian conductors, filmmakers and authors protesting the war speak to the futility of his attempts to enforce cultural submission. Opera singer Vadim Cheldiyev has twice been jailed for anti-Putin protests. Historian Yuri Dmitriev is serving 15 years in prison on trumped-up charges for his exposés of Stalinist mass graves. In just the last few days, Thomas Sanderling, who was born in Novosibirsk, stepped down as the head of the city’s vaunted philharmonic orchestra to protest the invasion. Vasily Petrenko, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra’s artistic director, said he would not perform in his home country “until peace has been restored.”
For cultural institutions to tar all Russians with Mr. Putin’s crimes also risks feeding xenophobia in the West. The premise of guilt-by-association is already fueling instances of harassment and intimidation against Russian-speakers and owners of Russian-themed restaurants in the U.S. and Europe.
There is no blueprint for conscientious cultural engagement with nationals of an aggressor state. Official entities—state theaters, for example—are most easily disavowed as tools of soft state power. It is difficult to imagine a concert hall presenting conductor Valery Gergiev, the director of Moscow’s Mariinsky Theatre, without seeming to endorse his unabashed alliance with Mr. Putin. Beyond that it gets more complicated. The Kremlin is the primary underwriter of its nation’s culture. (Even Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s dissident novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published with the explicit approval of Nikita Khrushchev.) Asking artists to disavow Mr. Putin’s war in order to carry on creatively can imperil their safety.
International arts exchanges are not just forms of entertainment or edification but a birthright of global citizenship. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights enshrines the right to “receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” If curators or booksellers adopt strict ideological or national litmus tests, they forfeit the power to surprise, challenge and change us.
Literature—and especially works in translation—can enable readers to inhabit the worlds of their sworn geopolitical foes, unlocking empathy as an antidote to contempt. Cultural dialogues with independent-minded Russians are essential to illuminating the current crisis and conjuring paths past it.
Last week, Vancouver’s Recital Society canceled an August performance by 20-year-old Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev for fear of “demonstrations outside or hecklers inside.” In doing so, they surrendered to the heckler’s veto, allowing groups of unruly objectors to dictate what audiences may see and hear. That an apolitical Russian piano prodigy was banned from a concert six months hence also raises troubling questions of how long these prohibitions will endure and what it will take to lift them.
The South Africa boycott illustrates the attendant complexities. When U.S. municipalities refused to do business with publishers active in South Africa, Black South African students lost access to the latest medical textbooks. The Wall Street Journal was banned from libraries in Houston for having a correspondent covering South Africa. Paul Simon’s 1986 album “Graceland,” which was partly recorded in South Africa, was reviled by boycott organizers yet embraced by many of the country’s most eminent Black musicians. The struggle against apartheid is testament to an ethic of informed and purposeful cross-cultural dealings, not ironclad prohibitions.
Arts institutions can best help Ukrainians by positioning themselves not as a bulwark against Russian culture but as a fortification of Ukraine’s. By aiding and hosting Ukrainian artists, translating works and preserving treasures, Western institutions can support Ukraine’s fight for survival. In addressing the area once known as the Soviet Union, Western interpreters should reject the Kremlin’s self-serving lens and widen the aperture to encompass Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other nations with distinct histories and aspirations.
The Russian onslaught against Ukraine has as its target the liberal international order, the premise of self-government and the universal yearning for freedom. To fight back, cultural institutions should rebuke not just the Kremlin’s invasion but Mr. Putin’s determination to wage a mortal clash of civilizations, peoples and ideas.
Peloton Interactive Co. PTON -4.05% ’s new chief executive is looking to overhaul the stationary-bike maker’s pricing strategy in a bid to turn around the company.
The company on Friday will start testing a new pricing system in which customers pay a single monthly fee that covers both the namesake stationary bike and a monthly subscription to workout courses. If a customer cancels, Peloton would take back the bike with no charge.
Select Peloton stores in Texas, Florida, Minnesota and Denver will for a limited period offer a bike and subscription for between $60 and $100 a month, an experiment that aims to find a price proposition that will help return Peloton to profitability without crippling growth.
If adopted, the model would be a major shift for Peloton, which built a business around selling high-price, screen-equipped stationary bikes alongside $39-per-month subscriptions to its connected workout classes. The idea: sell Peloton as a fitness service that can be canceled anytime rather than as a major purchase with a subscription attached.
“There is no value in sitting around negotiating what the outcome will be,” Barry McCarthy, who last month replaced co-founder John Foley as CEO, said in an interview. “Let’s get in the market and let the customer tell us what works.”
Along with a pricing overhaul, Mr. McCarthy, the 68-year-old former finance chief of Netflix Inc. and Spotify Technology SA, said he plans to reshape his executive team, consider manufacturing simpler bikes, and upend the company’s capital spending strategy. Rather than investing primarily in bikes, treadmills and other equipment, he said, Peloton will spend most of its money improving its digital interface and content options.
He said inventors that control 70% of voting shares of Peloton, including Mr. Foley, have agreed to put off any discussions around selling the company while he executes his turnaround plan. Mr. Foley still controls around 35% of voting power even after selling about $150 million worth of his shares in the company since the start of 2021, said Ben Silverman, director of research at InsiderScore. That voting power is because of his holdings of Class B shares, which entitle holders to 20 votes a share.
Initially one the pandemic’s biggest success stories, New York-based Peloton has lowered its revenue forecasts for several quarters in a row and has said it would cut roughly 20% of its corporate positions to help cope with widening losses as demand cools.
The $39-a-month subscription price has existed essentially since Peloton’s inception. In recent years, the company has lowered the cost of its bikes and treadmills, either by cutting prices or offering cheaper options. A Peloton bike in 2020 cost $2,495; now the cheapest model is $1,495, not including a delivery charge.
Under the test program, people get a Peloton and a membership that includes access to all its courses for a single monthly fee, with the ability to cancel anytime. The offers would be available through Peloton stores, or studios, and not online. Subscribers would pay a nonrefundable delivery fee.
Mr. McCarthy said a different pricing system could draw new customers and make the business more profitable.
His predecessor, Mr. Foley, argued that Covid was only the beginning of Americans’ shift to online, connected fitness. Based on that assumption, Mr. Foley dramatically increased the company’s capacity, which proved to be well in excess of demand as legions of people returned to gyms and Peloton’s growth sputtered
That misstep, Mr. McCarthy said, led to Peloton’s current woes.
Now, he said, Peloton has to figure out how to tap new customers and make more money on each subscription, while reducing its reliance on bikes and treadmills to deliver profits.
Given Peloton’s ability to retain subscribers, Mr. McCarthy said, higher subscription rates carry big profit potential over time. Even at $39, Peloton subscriptions are hugely profitable, he said. He said he wants to employ models that succeeded at Spotify and Netflix and that Peloton has far higher retention rates than either of those companies.
“I’m a huge proponent of them charging more for subscriptions,” said BMO Capital Markets analyst Simeon Siegel. “But they need to internalize that that will hurt their brand and lower demand,” while making the company more profitable.
He said the fact that Peloton’s growth has slowed dramatically despite cutting the price of equipment casts doubt on whether any changes to the pricing model will win converts.
A Peloton spokeswoman said the ability of customers to cancel anytime differentiates the potential new model from previous price cuts.
Profitability of Peloton’s exercise equipment is sharply lower than it was before the pandemic, as the company struggles with higher production and logistics costs and excess capacity.
Equipment sales have been vital because the physical machines, while more costly to make, generate more than twice as much revenue as subscriptions, UBS analyst Arpiné Kocharyan said.
Equipment sales have funded Peloton’s ballooning marketing spending up until now, Ms. Kocharyan said. “If you are going to get out of the product business, who is going to pay for that sales and marketing?” she said.
Mr. McCarthy said it isn’t yet clear the role Peloton machines will play in the company’s future. He said roughly 80% of capital spending goes toward equipment, with the rest spent on software. That should be reversed, he said.
Among potential offerings he thinks Peloton should look at developing: its own social-media platform, more seamless ways for members to interact and compete with each other during classes, and partnerships that could land Peloton classes on other devices, or allow outside content to stream on Peloton’s screens.
At the moment, Mr. McCarthy said, Peloton will fervently market test, a strategy more reliable than focus groups and consumer surveys. Netflix also did market tests to see what caused subscribers to ditch the service or keep it, he said.
There isn’t much middle ground between success and failure, he said.
“Either I’m going to leave here successfully,” he said, “or I’m going to leave with a greatly diminished reputation.”
Pierre Andurand posts blockbuster gains after bet on rising oil prices
Group of hedge funds profit from boom in commodities sparked by Ukraine crisis
Pierre Andurand is among a group of hedge fund managers who have notched up sharp gains in recent weeks as fears of global supply disruptions sent commodity prices soaring to the highest level in 14 years.
Andurand’s Discretionary Enhanced hedge fund has posted gains of around 109 per cent in the year to early March after betting that crude oil prices would rise, according to people familiar with the fund’s performance. Other funds, including Kenneth Tropin’s Graham Capital and Paris-based CFM, have also profited from big moves in energy prices.
The gains by Andurand, who manages around $1.1bn, come during a frenetic year in commodities markets. Oil prices have soared by about 50 per cent since the end of 2021, while a broad basket of raw materials tracked by the S&P GSCI index is up by a third to its highest level since 2008. The gains accelerated sharply in recent weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine and the west hit Moscow by imposing unprecedented sanctions. Russia is a major supplier of oil, gas and — along with Ukraine — grains such as wheat.
“Investors who are long commodities — whether by luck or skill — have had a great year packed into a few weeks,” said Andrew Beer, managing member at Dynamic Beta Investments. The DBMF fund that he co-manages is up by around 11 per cent so far this year, with crude oil being by far the biggest contributor to gains.
Andurand’s profits mark the latest correct call for the former BlueGold trader, who also chalked up large returns in 2020 when he predicted oil prices could turn negative. Andurand Capital declined to comment on performance this year.
Betting on higher oil and gas prices has also been a popular trade in recent months among computer-driven hedge funds. Many of these use algorithms to detect and then latch on to developing price trends in global financial markets.
Energy prices had already started rising as global economies rebounded from coronavirus-induced lockdowns, prompting a number of hedge funds to take bullish positions even before Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. A model portfolio run by Société Générale, which tracks the positions such funds may take, has been running bets on rising crude and heating oil for more than two months.
Funds tracking other trading signals, for instance the supply of oil or differentials in the price of crude for delivery now or well into the future, were also largely betting on higher prices.
“The signals were very, very bullish [even before the Russian conflict] . . . you had almost every factor contributing” to a bullish signal for energy positioning, said Pablo Calderini, president and chief investment officer at Connecticut-based Graham Capital, which manages around $15bn in assets.
He pointed to the reopening of economies after the pandemic and the fact that oil prices for delivery in the near future were higher than prices further out, which is traditionally a sign that oil prices will strengthen.
On February 23, the day before the invasion of Ukraine, quant funds wagering on market trends were running “very high” bets on rising commodity prices after increasing their positions earlier in the month, said Cedric Vuignier, head of liquid alternative managed funds and research at SYZ Capital.
Graham’s Tactical Trend fund was up 11.4 per cent in the first two months of the year, according to a letter to investors, driven by moves in commodities, while its Quant Macro fund was up 4.7 per cent.
Other funds to profit this year include CFM, which manages $8.5bn in assets. Its Discus fund, which uses a range of market signals, is up 15 per cent in 2022, with a large portion of gains coming from energy prices, said a person familiar with its positioning.
London-based Aspect Capital, which manages more than $9bn in assets, has gained 8.6 per cent in its main Diversified fund this year. Its biggest bet on rising prices was in the energy space, according to an investor letter seen by the Financial Times, and it profited from gains in the price of oil and related products. Leda Braga’s Systematica, meanwhile, has added 11 per cent in its BlueTrend fund this year, helped by positions in commodities.
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Funds have also profited from rising energy prices by trading other types of assets. Makuria Investment Management, headed by Mans Larsson, the former head of Canyon Capital’s London office, gained nearly 12 per cent last month, according to an investor letter. That was helped by positions in companies involved in the transition to green energy and the supply of metals such as copper, a key metal in improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.
“We are in the early stages of a long-duration structural bull market in energy commodities and ‘green metals’ that will likely last for decades,” wrote Larsson in the letter.
Research Calls
- Upgrades:
- Alpha Metallurgical Resources (AMR) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at B. Riley Securities; tgt raised to $155
- Arista Networks (ANET) upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo; tgt raised to $160
- CrowdStrike (CRWD) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BTIG Research; tgt $257
- Essential Utilities (WTRG) upgraded to Outperform from In-line at Evercore ISI; tgt raised to $53
- Givaudan SA (GVDNY) upgraded to Hold from Sell at Societe Generale
- Hormel Foods (HRL) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Argus; tgt $57
- IDEAYA Biosciences (IDYA) upgraded to Buy from Hold at Stifel; tgt lowered to $20
- KB Home (KBH) upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at JP Morgan; tgt lowered to $51
- NetApp (NTAP) upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Barclays; tgt raised to $102
- Pilgrim's Pride (PPC) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at BMO Capital Markets; tgt raised to $30
- Toll Brothers (TOL) upgraded to Neutral from Underweight at JP Morgan; tgt lowered to $58
- Downgrades:
- Asana (ASAN) downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JP Morgan; tgt lowered to $32
- Cisco (CSCO) downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo; tgt lowered to $65
- Coterra Energy (CTRA) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Sandler; tgt raised to $26
- Green Brick Partners (GRBK) downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JP Morgan; tgt lowered to $20
- Hess Midstream Partners (HESM) downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo; tgt $33
- Huntington Ingalls (HII) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA Securities; tgt lowered to $215
- McDonald's (MCD) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Northcoast
- Meritage (MTH) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JP Morgan; tgt lowered to $111
- Mettler-Toledo (MTD) downgraded to Sell from Neutral at Goldman; tgt $1240
- Pfizer (PFE) upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Independent Research; tgt $54
- SLR Capital Partners (SLRC) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Compass Point; tgt $20
- Walt Disney (DIS) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Atlantic Equities; tgt lowered to $172
- Others:
- Avista (AVA) initiated with a Neutral at Mizuho; tgt $47
- C4 Therapeutics (CCCC) initiated with an Overweight at JP Morgan; tgt $43
- Canadian Nat'l Rail (CNI) resumed with a Neutral at JP Morgan
- Canadian Pacific (CP) resumed with an Overweight at JP Morgan, added to U.S. Analyst Focus List
- Eli Lilly (LLY) initiated with an Outperform at Daiwa Securities; tgt $286
- Esperion Therapeutics (ESPR) initiated with a Buy at H.C. Wainwright; tgt $22
- Franklin BSP Realty Trust (FBRT) resumed with a Mkt Outperform at JMP Securities; tgt $15
- Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) initiated with a Hold at Deutsche Bank; tgt $7
- IdaCorp (IDA) initiated with a Buy at Mizuho; tgt $119
- Kymera Therapeutics (KYMR) initiated with a Neutral at JP Morgan; tgt $44
- NorthWestern (NWE) initiated with a Neutral at Mizuho; tgt $62
- Verrica Pharmaceuticals (VRCA) initiated with a Buy at Brookline; tgt $20