...is that they can magically change...
In mid-August, we wrote about some confusion regarding Broadcom's (BRCM $113
1/4) price target. Two reports, which went out to a limited audience, indicated the target
as being $180. A broadly distributed company specific bulletin listed the target as
$157. At the time, we asked for clarification and the response from ML was that the
$157 was correct. (See RESTEX.COM Technology Update (08/18/99)). Yesterday, a new
report was issued. The new report indicated that ML was reiterating its $180 price
target on BRCM. We again asked for a clarification. The response we got was that the
analyst had raised it verbally sometime in the past few weeks although it could not be
pinpointed when. If the increase did occur in the past few weeks it would, in our opinion,
make BRCM's exclusion from the ML Tech Top 10 even more puzzling. Assuming the
$180 was in place a few weeks back as ML now insists, then the committee, which
determined the ML Tech Top 10, apparently passed over a stock that would have
offered the second highest upside potential, and almost 2-3x the upside potential of the
chip stocks that were selected. A curious decision, in our opinion. |
