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AppLovin, Levi Strauss get upgrades

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Shares of both AppLovin and Levi Strauss received Wall Street upgrades. AppLovin (APP) had its rating raised to Overweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley. Levi Strauss's (LEVI) rating was raised to Buy at BofA Securities.

Learn more about both calls in the video above.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Wealth here.

00:00 Speaker A

Now time for some of today's trending tickers joining me now. We've got my Morning Brief co-anchor, Madison Mills. We're watching Applovin and Levi Strauss. Important to note both stocks are under pressure amid a broader selloff. First up, App11 upgraded to overweight from equal weight at Morgan Stanley. The firm says they see it as a quote opportunity to buy ad tech's best executor on sale. Applovin currently trading at around $266 bucks a share and the analysts see the stock going to $350 a share. That's around 27% upside from the stock's last close. Shares moving lower here just by about 1.6% right now. We should note there is a broader market pullback off of yesterday's historic rally that we did see.

01:17 Madison Mills

Yeah. Absolutely. But I thought the headline here from Applovin, you really can't get much better than that, calling them the best executor here. Applovin again upgraded to overweight from equal weight from Morgan Stanley analysts Matthew Cost, saying the key change is that we now see ad growth estimates as achievable. Now they did cut estimates and the price target just to account for, what else, other than macro uncertainty, and the bare case now assuming a consumer-led recession in 2025. So also hearing that recession call reiterated here despite the fact that we had that 90-day pause put on reciprocal tariffs outside of China here. Applovin though still getting a lot of love more broadly across the street. If you take a look on our Yahoo Finance platform, you got about 24 buys, four holds, just one sell rating among those analysts, and the average price target is 48508, which is keenly above the 270 level the shares currently at right now.

02:46 Speaker A

Next up here, we've got Levi Strauss that we're tracking upgraded to buy at Bank of America. The firm says the company has lost a lot of po or excuse me, they have a lot of positive boxes checked and that those positives outweigh incremental risks. BofA has a $20 price target, representing about 34% upside from the stock's last close. Shares here though, again, with today's broader market activity, they are trading lower right now.

03:33 Madison Mills

I think it's really interesting that Bank of America is choosing to raise them to buy after their earnings this week. I was able to speak with CFO Harmeet Singh, and I asked him about the lack of guidance moving forward. Maybe they got lucky that they were able to get away with not offering guidance before we got a little bit more air quotes clarity on these tariff policies here, because obviously analysts are looking past that lack of clarity. They did establish a tariff task force internally to figure out their guidance moving forward here because their guidance that they did issue, I should say, did not include the macro impact of those tariffs. So I wasn't really sure how I should be viewing that guidance if it didn't take those tariffs into account, because obviously this is going to have a huge impact on Levi's. They have a lot of production in the likes of China, of course, but also Mexico and some of the other countries that could be impacted by these reciprocal tariffs after these negotiations play out.

04:52 Speaker A

Yeah, and a major tie into just even in the onset of some of the tariff tit-for-tat and the announcements more broadly, how this has a long-term implication on the consumer mindset. And if, you know, the replenishment rate stays high for your jeans, I don't I don't know how quickly people work through jeans these days. There's a lot of technical fabrics involved.

05:24 Madison Mills

I know. Levi's they they say they last a long time, so.

05:30 Speaker A

Yeah. All right. Good stuff.

05:32 Madison Mills

That's the message. Yeah.

05:35 Speaker A

All right. Good to know. Thank you so much, Maddie. Appreciate it. Thank you.

05:38 Madison Mills

You're welcome. Thank you.

05:40 Speaker A

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