
Home Depot (HD) Stock Gains as Nomura Upgrades to 'Buy'
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Home Depot (HD) - Get Report are rising 1.04% to $128.93 in pre-market trading on Thursday after Nomura upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral."
The firm hiked its price target to $155 from $140 on shares of the home improvement retailer, representing potential upside of 21.5% based on Wednesday's closing price.
Market share gains, competitive advantages, a "solid" underlying market and "strong management" position the company well for growth and provide downside protection, Nomura wrote in a note released this morning.
The firm no longer believes that slowing home price growth poses a "great risk" to Home Depot's same-store sales, as the company's comps remained "solidly positive" despite decelerating home price growth in 2014 and 2015.
"We believe any positive growth would be a tailwind," Nomura said.
Additionally, online competition doesn't pose a major threat to Home Depot since many of its customers need sales associate expertise, the firm noted. Home Depot's physical stores also benefit from the "need now" quality of project-based items.
Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates the stock as a "buy" with a ratings score of A.
Home Depot's strengths such as its revenue growth, notable return on equity, good cash flow from operations, impressive record of earnings per share growth and increase in net income outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated.
You can view the full analysis from the report here: HD
TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this article's author.










