While Fools should generally take the opinion of Wall Street with a grain of salt, it's not a bad idea to take a closer look at particularly stock-shaking upgrades and downgrades -- just in case their reasoning behind the call makes sense.
What: Shares of SandRidge Energy (NYSE: SD) rallied 3% this morning after Global Hunter Securities upgraded the gas and oil company from neutral to accumulate.
So what: Along with the upgrade, analyst Curtis Trimble boosted his price target to $8 (fro $7), representing about 24% worth of upside to Friday's close. While contrarians might be turned off by the stock's strength in recent months, Trimble thinks there's plenty of room to run given SandRidge's steadily improving fundamentals.
Now what: According to Global Hunter, SandRidge's risk/reward trade-off is particularly attractive at this point. "An improving Mississippian well profile -- both on the performance and cost sides of the equation -- provides the catalyst for our more aggressive position on SD shares," noted Trimble. "While we take management's 3% upward type curve revision with a large grain of salt, when coupled with a decline in well cost to $2.9MM, we think SD's improvements are at least worth a second look." With SandRidge shares still off about 25% from their two-year highs, it's tough to disagree with Global Hunter's bullishness.
