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.

Mortgage lender Countrywide Financial(CFC Quote) has been downgraded to a hold from a buy. The company's strengths include its revenue growth, attractive valuation levels and expanding profit margins. Its return on equity of 15.21% has outperformed the industry average, although it lags behind that of the S&P 500 average. On the downside, net income decreased by 32.84% in the second quarter compared with the same period last year, and EPS declined by 29.57% over the same timeframe. The poor earnings performance appears to have trickled down to the company's stock price performance, which has gone down by 36.87% in the past 12 months. Countrywide had been rated a buy since March 2006.

IXYS(IXYS Quote) designs, develops, manufactures and markets power semiconductors, radio frequency power transistors and systems, and digital and analog integrated circuits. It has been upgraded to a buy from a hold. The rating is driven by some important positives that should have a greater impact than any weaknesses and provide a better investment performance opportunity than most stocks we cover. Strengths include revenue growth, a largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, attractive valuation levels and good cash flow from operations. Pluses such as these have helped IXYS' stock price to appreciate by 12.13% over the past 12 months, and TheStreet.com Ratings sees considerable upside potential ahead. These strengths outweigh the company's subpar growth in net income. IXYS had been rated a hold since January 2007.