Yahoo! Wins New Fans on Wall Street

Yahoo! (YHOO Quote) may have lost some of Wall Street's confidence last week, but on Tuesday it gained new sell-side support.

Banc of America Securities analyst John Janedis started coverage on the Internet bellwether, assigning Yahoo! a buy rating as well as a price target toward the high end of brokerage forecasts for the company.

Janedis' $39 price target comes only a few days after Yahoo!'s good-but-not-good-enough second-quarter results speeded a downward slide. Yahoo!'s shares, which hit a 52-week-high of $36.51 on June 30, were trading at $30.36 Tuesday morning -- up 10 cents for the day but down 17% from their recent peak.

As Yahoo!'s shares have climbed over the past year -- they're still more than double the price where they were last summer -- analysts have wrestled with the question of whether the share price is justified by the company's revenue growth and cash flows, or whether Yahoo!'s stock is more reflective of yet another Internet stock bubble. ...