Cowen and Company gave outperform rating to Plug Power stock

Cowen and Company reiterated their rating of outperform on Plug Power Inc. shares on Thursday in a research note. Currently, the company has $3.50 stock price target.
The analysts at Cowen & Capital said in a statement, “Management, noted that large shipments were made this quarter to several large customers like Wal-Mart and Kroger. 175 of the 419 GenDrive units shipped in the quarter went to a new customer…Management estimates that by the end of 2016 existing customer penetration should be around 25 percent to 30 percent, while new customer penetration will be around 6% to 7%.,”
Numerous analysts have also weighed on stock of Plug Power Inc. Roth Capital analysts assigned stock price target of $2.60 on company’s share and suggested a rating of Hold on Tuesday in a research note. Dougherty & Co. analysts also covered the stock and set Buy rating along with $3.70 target price on Plug Power stock. Lastly, FBR & Co. downgraded stock of the company to $6.50 from $8 and assigned outperform rating on the company’s stock on March 24.
Plug Power announced its 1QFY15 earnings on Monday 11th May. The company posted earnings of $0.07 per share for the quarter covering from January to March 2015 surpassing consensus estimate of 6 cents by 1 cent. The company also posted $9.40 million in revenue for the period as compared to $18.13 million estimated by analysts. Plug Power’s revenue for the quarter was up by 67.9% on year over year basis. On the whole, analysts expect the company will report 22 cents in earnings per share for fiscal year 2015.
Plug Power Inc. shares opened at $2.61 on Monday May 18 reached day high of $2.62 and closed at $2.58 after going red by 1.15%. The company’s share price is up by 3.88% to $2.68 during pre-market trading session today as of 7:22 AM EDT.
Regarding services of GenCare, the company had almost 5,500 GenDrive unit  and eight infrastructure sites of hydrogen  in the quarter service contract versus 3,000 GenDrive units and zero hydrogen infrastructure sites in the same quarter previous year.
The fuel cell maker has 1 year low and high of $2.32 and $6.47. The stock has 50 day and 200 day moving average of $2 and $3, respectively. Plug Power‘s has $452.59 million of market capitalization.
Plug Power Inc. manufactures and design fuel cell systems and provides alternative energy emphasized on development, design and manufacture and commercializing of fuel cell systems for the industry.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. downgrades Deere & Company stock

JPMorgan downgrades Deere & Company to Underweight from Neutral, reducing the stock price target from $84 from $90, quoting  liquidity crunch for farmers as the major reason.

JP Morgan revealed the meeting details with several participants of industry including farmers, dealers and industry experts. The sell side company demoted Deere & Company to Underweight from Neutral mentioning difficult times for the industry and said that the equipment manufacturer of agricultural industry is expected to get impacted sharply. The firm also reduces its stock price target to $84 from previous $90.

While talking about the situation of farmers’, Ann Duignan analyst at JP Morgan said, “We believe it was clear from what we heard that the industry is currently in dire straits with the potential for a liquidity crunch for farmers into 2016.” Moreover she said that the dealers also acknowledged that there are a lot of used HP Deere tractors in company’s inventory, and this is expected to impact the sales of new tractors in the coming years.

Ms. Duignan also revised her earnings guidance for Deer &Co. as they believe that the agriculture industry will be under pressure in the coming year. She cut her fiscal year 2015 earnings estimate to $5.2 from $5.28 per share. She also reduced her fiscal year 2016 earnings estimate to $4.2 from $5.27 per share.

Recently, the company also noted that the United States Department of Agriculture’s grain stock, total 7.75 billion bushels of US corn stock increased by 11% in year over year basis. Majority of farmers kept the last year’s crop, hopeful that the price will reach a new and attractive level, but as they shrub their corn in the perfect condition, the mixture of these fresh crops with old burdensome stocks is expected to decrease the prices.

As per Tractorhouse.com, there are over 6 thousand Deere, 175 HP+ tractors used less than 4 years available in North America for sale. This shows roughly 60% of altogether used 175 HP+ tractors. The company applies 20 times multiple on its expected fiscal year 2016 earnings in order to reach $84 of new stock price target.

As per the survey conducted by Bloomberg, Out of 23 analysts, 5 gave Buy rating, 10 of them assigned Hold rating, while remaining 8 recommended Sell rating to the stock of the company. The twelve month consensus mid-point price target stood at $85.33 that shows a downside potential of almost 4.3% as compared to current stock price of the company.

The stock price was down 3.34% to $89.13 at market close on Friday May 15.