TSC Ratings' Updates: Nvidia

Each business day, 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.

However, the rating does not incorporate all of the factors that can alter a stock's performance. For example, it doesn't always factor in recent corporate or industry events that could affect the stock price, nor does it include recent technology developments and competitive dynamics that may affect the company.

For those reasons, we believe that a rating alone cannot tell the whole story and that it should be part of an investor's overall research.

The following ratings changes were generated on July 9.

Medical Properties Trust(MPW), a health care real estate investment trust, has been upgraded to buy. It has shown very impressive revenue growth, jumping 57% compared with the same quarter last year. As a result, EPS also improved and has remained stable over the past year. The company's net income increased 10% vs. the same quarter last year, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. In addition, both the gross profit margin and the net profit margin are higher than the industry and S&P average. Medical Properties Trust had been rated hold since April 10, 2007.