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 Maxim Integrated Products (MXIM) climbed 2% today after Barclays upgraded the mixed-signal circuit technologist from Equal Weight to Overweight.
So what: Along with the upgrade, analyst Blayne Curtis boosted his price target to $35 (from $28), representing about 22% worth of upside to yesterday's close. While momentum traders might be turned off by the stock's sluggish action over the past several months, Curtis believes that Maxim is too juicy to pass up given the strong growth tailwinds working in its favor.
Now what: Barclays cited two specific reasons for their bullish stance: "(1) we have gained further confidence that MXIM's content in the Samsung GS5 is increasing with a Bio Sensor win and additional building block sockets; and (2) we see additional opportunities in Mobile with new products (Bio Sensor, Audio, Touch, MEMs) to return the Consumer to growth," noted Curtis. When you couple Maxim's seemingly strong turnaround prospects with its forward P/E of 14, it's pretty tough to disagree with Barclays' upgrade.
