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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, Disney, Fiserv and Archer Daniels

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – April 11, 2018 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include Wells Fargo (WFC - Free Report) , Coca-Cola (KO - Free Report) , Disney (DIS - Free Report) , Fiserv and Archer Daniels (ADM - Free Report) .

Here are highlights from Tuesday’s Analyst Blog:

Top Stock Reports for Wells Fargo, Coca Cola and Disney

The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola and Disney. These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

Wells Fargo’s hares have underperformed the Zacks Major Banks industry over the last six months (-6.1% vs. +4.4%). With earnings estimate for the soon-to-be-reported quarter witnessing slight upward revision lately, the company possesses a decent earnings surprise history, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the trailing four quarters.

Wells Fargo has been slapped with new sanctions including a cap on the assets position by the Federal Reserve. Further, the review process of the bank’s Wealth and Investment Management segment is also in preliminary stages.

Moreover, Moody’s has downgraded the rating outlook of the bank to negative, though S&P has kept unchanged at stable. Though consistent growth in loans and deposits, lower tax rate and expansions will likely support its growth profile, the current crisis related to the revelation of illegally opening millions of illegal accounts in 2016 at the company will take some time to alleviate.

Shares of Coca-Cola have outperformed the Zacks Soft Drinks Beverages industry in the last year, (+2.7% vs. +2.6%). Coca-Cola enjoys solid long-term fundamentals given its worldwide reach, strong brand power, higher international presence and impressive cash position.

Although top line needs to show sustained improvement, the Zacks analyst is encouraged by the company’s strategic efforts in making its portfolio as a total beverage company with improved marketing and innovation, focus on driving revenues by improved price/mix, digital focus, and productivity initiatives toward driving margins.

Moreover, Coca-Cola’s transformative global re-franchising initiatives will lead to better margins and returns as well as superior growth, despite hurting sales/profits in the near term. Also, Coca-Cola’s new revenue platforms should drive growth over the long term. However, challenging global market conditions, weak CSD volumes and currency and structural headwinds remain challenges.

Buy-ranked Disney’s shares have increased +1.2% over the last six months vs. the Zacks Media Conglomerates industry’s -0.9% decline in that same time period. Disney is acquiring majority of Twenty-First Century Fox’s assets, which includes its Film and Television studios accompanied by cable and international TV businesses.

The deal provides a bit of fresh air to Disney, which for quite some time now has been jostling in the fast changing media landscape. The Zacks analyst thinks addition of Fox's rich library of movies and TV series would greatly enhance Disney’s prospects in the streaming service.

The company's long list of franchises continues to reap hefty box-office revenues. Moreover, the upcoming launch of its multi-sport streaming service, ESPN Plus, is a tailwind. Estimates have been stable lately ahead of the company’s Q2 earnings release. The company has mixed record of earnings surprises in recent quarters.

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Fiserv and Archer Daniels.

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