Five Stocks That Just Had Their Price Targets Raised

Stocks are mostly down as investors await Friday’s monthly jobs report, which analysts think will weigh on the Federal Reserve’s decision whether to raise interest rates. Meanwhile, several important stocks had their price target raised by investment firms this week. A price target for a stock is its projected price level predicted by an expert based on multifarious metrics. Price target provides clues about the potential and future prospects surrounding a stock that could help an investor to make a decision.

Among the important stocks that recently have had their price targets increased are Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF), Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA), Federal Realty Investment Trust (NYSE:FRT), and Harley-Davidson Inc. (NYSE:HOG). Let’s take a closer look at the analyst action involving these stocks and analyze the hedge fund sentiment towards each one of them.

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Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU)’s stock is in the spotlight after Deutsche Bank and Stifel raised their price targets for the company. Deutsche reiterated its ‘Buy’ rating and upped the price target for the semiconductor company to $20 from $15, citing improving conditions in the DRAM market. Stifel upped its price target for Micron to $18 from $15, mainly due to rising sales of DRAM and growing prospects of 3-D NAND sales. Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU)’s shares have gained 18% so far in 2016. A total of 67 hedge funds from our database were long Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) at the end of the second quarter, up from 51 funds a quarter earlier.

Mizuho raised its price target for the New York-based luxury jewelry company Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF) to $82 from $72 on Monday, while Nomura Securities also upped its target to $76 from $64, following the release of Tiffany’s second-quarter results, which showed an unexpected rise in profits as lower product input costs augmented the margins in the period. Overall, the company earned $0.84 per share on revenue of $932 million, while analyst had estimated EPS of $0.72 on revenue of $934.74 million. At the end of the second quarter, 26 out of the funds in our database were bullish on Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF).

On the next page, we will discuss other three stocks, whose price targets have recently been increased.