While Fools should generally take the opinion of Wall Street with a grain of salt, it's not a bad idea to take a look at particularly stock-shaking analyst upgrades and downgrades -- just in case their reasoning behind the call makes sense.
What: Shares of Qualcomm, Inc. (QCOM 0.97%) had a sluggish Thursday after Raymond James downgraded the mobile chipset giant from "Strong Buy" to "Outperform."
So what: Along with the downgrade, analyst Tavis McCourt reiterated his price target of $79, representing about 11% worth of upside to yesterday's close. While McCourt remains bullish about Qualcomm's fundamentals following its Analyst Day, he believes that management's long-term growth forecast could be a bit on the high side.
Now what: According to Raymond James, the stock's risk/reward trade-off still looks favorable. "Qualcomm committed to a long term capital return program, and new product announcements confirm the company's dominance of high end mobile chipsets," noted Raymond James, "and although we are slightly skeptical of Qualcomm's ability to grow 10%+ for five years (a long time) as it guided to, we do believe that high-single-digit EPS growth looks like a conservatively prudent estimate along with a 2%+ dividend yield." So while Qualcomm shares aren't exactly dirt cheap, I'd agree that they still offer solid long-term, risk-adjusted value.
