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 Tableau Software Inc (DATA) climbed 4% on Tuesday after Baird upgraded the business analytics technologist from neutral to outperform.
So what: Along with the upgrade, analyst Steven Ashley planted a price target of $95 on the stock, representing about 25% worth of upside to yesterday's close. So while momentum traders might be turned off by Tableau's sharp share-price pullback in recent weeks, Ashley's call could reflect a growing sense on Wall Street that its growth potential is becoming too cheap to pass up.
Now what: According to Baird, Tableau's long-term risk/reward trade-off is highly attractive at this point. "Being ranked No.1 in 2014 Gartner MQ for 'Ability to Execute' should only further enhance market awareness," Ashley said. "Partners continue to believe Tableau has only scratched the surface of its market opportunity. The upgrade is really not a call on 1Q14, which we expect to be a normal/strong quarter that should match Investor expectations." Of course, with Tableau shares still up more than 80% from their 52-week lows and trading at a lofty price-to-sales of 20, I'd hold out for an even wider margin of safety before jumping in.
