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Research Daily

Mark Vickery

Top Analyst Reports for Bank of America, Amgen & NextEra Energy

BAC NEE AMGN SYK TMUS SPGI

Trades from $3

Friday, April 12, 2019

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 Bank of America (BAC), Amgen (AMGN) and NextEra Energy (NEE). These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>

Bank of America's shares have outperformed the Zacks Major Regional Banks in the past six months, gaining +4.1% vs. -1.8%. The company possesses an impressive earnings surprise history, beating expectations in each of the trailing four quarters. Earnings estimates have been going down ahead of the company's first quarter 2019 results.

The Zacks analyst thinks the bank's initiatives to expand into new markets and digital offerings will likely further enhance cross-selling opportunities. Moreover, the rise in loan and deposit balances, higher interest rates and efforts to control expenses will likely support profitability.

However, the dismal performance of capital markets has been hurting the company’s investment banking operations. Further, litigation issues related to its misconduct in the pre-crisis period are likely to lead to an increase in legal expenses, thereby hurting the bottom line to some extent.

(You can read the full research report on Bank of America here >>>).

Shares of Buy-ranked Amgen have declined -1.3% year to date, underperforming the Zacks Biomedical and Genetics industry's increase of +9.3%. The Zacks analyst thinks that while Amgen’s newer drugs — Prolia, Xgeva, Blincyto, Kyprolis — will drive sales, biosimilar and brand competition faced by its legacy drugs will create pressure on the top line in 2019.

Meanwhile, uptake of key drug, Repatha has been slow due to payer restrictions. However, Amgen is progressing well with its pipeline and approval of Aimovig was a huge boost. In the past five years, Amgen has launched nine products, including two in new therapeutic areas. Amgen boasts a strong biosimilars pipeline, which could be an important long-term growth driver for the company.

Amgen’s restructuring plan is making it leaner and more cost-efficient. Lower taxes and share buybacks should provide some support to the bottom line. Estimates have declined lightly ahead of the Q1 earnings release. Amgen has a positive record of earnings surprises in recent quarters.

(You can read the full research report on Amgen here >>>).

NextEra Energy's shares have outperformed the Zacks Electric Power industry in the past year, gaining +18.6% vs. +14.3%. The Zacks analyst thinks NextEra Energy’s strategic investments to strengthen infrastructure, expansion of renewable operations and ongoing capital projects, on completion, will help in serving the company’s expanding customer base more efficiently.

Focus on expanding operation in natural gas pipelines will boost its performance, as demand for midstream services is increasing in the United States. The company’s expansion of business through acquisitions positively impacted earnings. However, its nature of business is subject to complex and comprehensive federal, state, and other regulations.

Substantial investments are undertaken to ensure the safety of nuclear operations. That said, if planned outages last longer than expected or there is an unplanned outage, the company’s normal operations and profitability might be hindered.

(You can read the full research report on NextEra Energy here >>>).

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Stryker (SYK), T-Mobile (TMUS) and S&P Global (SPGI).

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Mark Vickery

Senior Editor

Note: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>>

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