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.

i2 Technologies(ITWO) provides supply-chain management products to customers worldwide. It has been upgraded to hold from sell. The company improved its third-quarter earnings by 13.3% to 17 cents per share compared with 15 cents a share in the same period last year.

i2 has reported somewhat volatile earnings recently, but TheStreet.com Ratings believes it is poised for EPS growth in the coming year. i2's return on equity significantly exceeds that of both the industry average and the S&P 500. However, its debt-to-equity ratio is very high at 19.04 and higher than the industry average, implying that there is very poor management of debt levels within the company. i2 Technologies had been rated a sell since September 2007.