Stock Upgrades, Downgrades From TheStreet.com Ratings

Each weekday, TheStreet.com Ratings updates its ratings on the stocks it covers. The proprietary ratings model projects a stock's total return potential over a 12-month period, including both price appreciation and dividends. Buy, hold or sell ratings designate how the Ratings group expects these stocks to perform against a general benchmark of the equities market and interest rates.

While the ratings model is quantitative, it uses both subjective and objective elements. For instance, subjective elements include expected equities market returns, future interest rates, implied industry outlook and company earnings forecasts. Objective elements include volatility of past operating revenue, financial strength and company cash flows.

Automaker DaimlerChrysler(DAI Quote) has been upgraded to buy from hold. This reverses TheStreet.com Ratings' downgrade of the stock earlier this week, which was the result of a data glitch that has now been corrected.

The company has an impressive record of EPS growth, and its stock price has increased by 65.06% in the last year. Also, the automaker's net income increased by 618.15% in the first quarter of fiscal 2007 compared with the same period last year. year.

As a counter to these strengths, DaimlerChrysler shows generally poor debt management and poor profit margins. Its debt-to-equity ratio of 2.43 is above the industry average. Prior to Monday's erroneous downgrade, DaimlerChrysler had been rated a buy since August 2006.