Western Digital upgraded, PayPal initiated: Wall Street’s top analyst calls

The Fly

Tue, March 31, 2026 at 9:32 AM EDT 4 min read

• Bernstein upgraded Western Digital (WDC) to Outperform from Market Perform with a price target of $340, up from $170. Memory and hard disk drive stocks have sold off significantly on concerns around Google’s (GOOGL) TurboQuant report, but the firm believes it should have “zero impact” on hard disk drive demand and “negligible impact” on NAND demand.

• BofA upgraded Shake Shack (SHAK) to Neutral from Underperform with a price target of $101, up from $88. Menu innovation and featured value are contributing to more stable same store traffic, says the firm, which raised the firm’s FY26 adjusted EBITDA estimate to $288M from $279M as supply-chain savings offset inflation.

• UBS upgraded Perimeter Solutions (PRM) to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $30, up from $26. The stock selloff is overdone as the company has continued to execute well and deploy cash into accretive acquisitions, the firm tells investors in a research note.

• William Blair upgraded 10x Genomics (TXG) to Outperform from Market Perform. The firm is positive on the company’s role in enabling the high-resolution biological insights needed to build decision-enabling models and considers that execution and profitability have improved.

• Morgan Stanley upgraded Highwoods Properties (HIW) to Equal Weight from Underweight with a price target of $23, down from $24. The firm says its Underweight thesis has played out and cites valuation for the upgrade.

Top 5 Downgrades:

• Jefferies downgraded Rockwell Automation (ROK) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $380, down from $490, after a transfer in analyst coverage. The firm believes investor concern around AI disintermediation may limit a re-rating for Rockwell from current share levels.

• Jefferies downgraded Vertiv (VRT) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $260, down from $280, after a transfer in analyst coverage. The firm views consensus out-of-year margin expectations as elevated, saying they include Vertiv reaching its long-term target a year early.

• TD Cowen downgraded Colgate-Palmolive (CL) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $85, down from $96. The firm cut the company’s earnings estimates to reflect inflationary pressure from higher prices of oil-based inputs and potentially higher costs for tallow, which are up 40% versus a year ago on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

• Truist downgraded Phreesia (PHR) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $11, down from $24. The company’s Q4 earnings release came with a “meaningful reduction” to its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook, the firm tells investors in a research note. Baird, JPMorgan and Citi also downgraded stock to Neutral-equivalent ratings.

• Truist downgraded Terns Pharmaceuticals (TERN) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $53, down from $56, after the company agreed to be acquired by Merck (MRK) for $53 per share. Some investors have hope for an interloper, but Truist believes that Merck wouldn’t have announced the acquisition unless it was close to being finalized.