A Delta Air Lines jet taxis beyond parked Southwest Airlines planes at McCarran International Airport September 12, 2005 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethan Miller| Getty Images
Here are the biggest calls on Wall Street on Friday:
Citi initiated Delta Airlines & United Airlines as ‘buy’
Citi initiated several airline stocks and said it liked Delta’s revenue “diversity” and United’s global partnerships.
“Delta screens attractively on its revenue diversity, its relatively smooth earnings streams and its solid alliance networks. .. .United‘s global partnerships also appear to be ramping up positively, even if the carrier might have to invest more capital into Star Alliance partner Avianca than it had originally anticipated.”
Bank of America downgraded Booking Holdings to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’
Bank of America downgraded the operator of several travel sites and said it saw Asia as a “potentially” bigger headwind among other things.
“We are downgrading BKNG for 4 reasons: 1) negative signals headed into 4Q on macro conditions from travel industry (supported by the BofAML Lodging team’s Macro Activity Tracker), and Asia a potentially bigger headwind in 4Q, 2) competition likely accelerating in ’20 amid Airbnb’s planned listing & Ctrip’s Asia initiatives, and Booking may need incremental investment, 3) street booking/room night estimates in ’20 assume modest acceleration vs 3 years of deceleration, and 4) the stock is now within 6% of our $2,160 PO.”