Top of the Street: Centrica, IMI, BT, Philips, Novozymes

Aalberts

28/07/2020 11:25

A round-up of notable broker activity this morning from Europe's
top-ranked* analysts:
    
    ** Jefferies ups British Gas owner Centrica  CNA.L  to "buy"
from "hold", saying the disposal of the U.S. business is in its
view transformational and shows management taking back control
after an uncontrollable period 
    ** Credit Suisse raises IMI  IMI.L  to "neutral" from
"underperform", citing the British engineering company's
undemanding valuation, solid delivery on cost savings from H1
results and more favourable risk/reward
    ** Barclays raises Britain's biggest mobile and broadband
company BT  BT.L  to "equal weight" from "underweight", saying
it sees positive catalysts ahead
    ** HSBC upgrades Swiss insurer Baloise  BALN.S  to "hold"
from "reduce", saying shares trade at a discount on absolute and
relative basis, while the dividend is supported by comfortable
capital position and steady cash remittance
    ** Kepler Cheuvreux raises Aalberts  AALB.AS  to "buy" from
"hold"

    INITIATIONS AND REINSTATEMENTS
    ** Barclays starts Danish enzyme maker Novozymes  NZYMb.CO 
with "underweight" as it sees little scope for the company to
outperform given its track record and the 20% share price rally
year to date  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL5N2EZ16D
    ** SocGen says it thinks Dutch health technology company
Philips  PHG.AS  could help EU health authorities accelerate the
transformation of healthcare systems, while offering an
attractive compound annual growth rate in sales and EPS;
initiates with "buy"
    
    
(*Analyst rankings from Thomson Reuters StarMine. The scale is
from 1-star to 5-star with 5 being the best. Analysts are ranked
on earnings accuracy as well as relative performance of
recommendations over trailing 12-month & 24-month periods.)


 ((jagoda.darlak@tr.com; olivier.cherfan@thomsonreuters.com))