Morgan Stanley upgrades HPE, sees stock surging nearly 30%
Hewlett Packard Enterprise poses an “attractive near-term value proposition” with its upcoming acquisition, according to Morgan Stanley. Ahead of HP’s earnings report Thursday after the bell, analyst Meta Marshall upgraded shares to overweight from equal weight. Marshall also raised her price target to $28 from $23, indicating 28.6% upside potential from Wednesday’s close. Earlier this year, HP announced it would acquire networking and cloud solutions company Juniper Networks in a deal worth around $14 billion. The transaction, which is expected to close before year-end or in early 2025, could help power HP’s share multiple above that of its hardware and networking peers, according to Marshall. “Combined with Juniper coming out of an inventory digestion and having new cloud customers, we are biased to think that there is more upside to Juniper’s numbers in the near term vs. downside upon the combination (particularly given stale Street estimates),” Marshall said. “With checks / competitors pointing to little downside to HPE’s core numbers in the near term (outside of EPS guide needing to reflect convertible / JNPR debt), we feel comfortable stepping into HPE,” the analyst added. HPE YTD mountain HPE year to date Shares are up 28.2% in 2024. The stock gained an additional 2.7% Thursday before the bell. Analyst sentiment around the stock is mixed. Eight of 18 analysts covering HPE rate it as a buy or strong buy, according to LSEG. The remaining 10, however, have a hold rating on it.