This Just In: Upgrades and Downgrades

At The Motley Fool, we poke plenty of fun at Wall Street analysts and their endless cycle of upgrades, downgrades, and "initiating coverage at neutral." So you might think we'd be the last people to give virtual ink to such "news." And we would be -- if that were all we were doing.

But in "This Just In," we don't simply tell you what the analysts said. We'll also show you whether they know what they're talking about. To help, we've enlisted Motley Fool CAPS, our tool for rating stocks and analysts alike. With CAPS, we'll be tracking the long-term performance of Wall Street's best and brightest -- and its worst and sorriest, too.

And speaking of the best ...
For some months now, I've been feeling mighty lonely sitting out on my perch and arguing that salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) is cheaper than it looks, with its triple-digit price-to-earnings ratio and all. This morning, though, I gained a little company, and it came in the form of a "buy" rating from one of Wall Street's better stock-picking groups: Kaufman Bros.

Although Kaufman doesn't boast a particularly admirable record for accuracy (just a hair above 50%), it nonetheless ranks in the top 15% of members tracked by CAPS on the strength of how well it does when it guesses right:

Of course, that 50% accuracy rating tells us that Kaufman also guesses wrong from time to time:
 

As for whether its guess on salesforce.com will land in the first table above, or the second ... well, we don't have a lot to go on. It has a 50/50 accuracy overall. Its highest-profile software pick (Google) is so far a loser. And of course, we do not know precisely why Kaufman chose to endorse salesforce.com just a few hours before earnings.

But we can guess
What we do know is this: Yesterday evening, salesforce.com announced its purchase of privately held product-support software maker Instranet. And we know that Kaufman peer JMP Securities thinks this is bad news for salesforce rival Rightnow Technologies. We also know that while JMP has an abysmal record of picking winners generally, it's beating the market soundly on its picks of salesforce peers Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), Rightnow, and Google.

Foolish takeaway
Put that mishmash together, blend well, and I suspect that Kaufman is telling us salesforce.com's prospects just improved markedly, and that's why Kaufman initiated coverage at "buy."

Toss in the fact that salesforce.com is already selling for an attractive valuation of 40 times trailing free cash flow, versus 43% projected long-term growth, and I'm inclined to agree.