This week's batch of sell-side research shifted expectations for a handful of public companies across advertising technology, automotive supply, semiconductor equipment, solar manufacturing and chipmakers. Below are the takeaways from each firm-level note and the key figures and assumptions driving the analysts' conclusions.
AppLovin Corp. - Needham lifts coverage
On Monday Needham upgraded AppLovin Corp (NASDAQ:APP) to Buy and set a $700 price target. The firm raised its ecommerce revenue forecast for 2026 to $1.45 billion from $1.05 billion, citing the prospect of self-service product launches that should encourage advertiser adoption and spending. Needham sees potential for sequential revenue gains that overcome typical first-quarter seasonality and frames the upgrade as correcting a market mispricing after the stock retreated from recent highs.
The research note positions the ecommerce upgrade as the primary catalyst for the Buy rating. Needham suggests that a more open advertising platform - driven by self-service functionality - could draw incremental advertiser budgets and accelerate revenue in 2026. The firm also leaves open additional upside in a bull scenario if AppLovin achieves adoption curves comparable to other rapidly scaling social ad platforms.
American Axle & Manufacturing - BWS begins coverage
On Tuesday BWS Financial initiated coverage of American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. (AXL) at Buy, attaching a $17 price target. The analyst note highlights the pending merger with Dowlais Group plc (DWLAF) and the planned rebranding of AXL to Dauch Corp, describing the combination as a major diversification step that broadens customer exposure across automakers and global regions while expanding the product set.
BWS projects that the merged company will realize scale benefits and operating leverage that translate into a material increase in free cash flow beginning in 2027. The research note indicates the company is deliberately tightening its bidding strategy to lift gross margins, a move that is expected to depress 2025 sales but improve cash generation. That near-term sales contraction is framed as a reason the share price may look cheap relative to fundamentals, with the market pricing the business at levels that conventionally signal distress despite ongoing profitability and positive free cash flow in the analyst’s view.
Applied Materials - Mizuho moves to Outperform
Wednesday brought a Mizuho upgrade of Applied Materials Inc (NASDAQ:AMAT) to Outperform, with a $370 price target. The firm raised its stance from Neutral to Outperform on the view that global wafer fab equipment demand is entering a pronounced capex cycle across the U.S., Taiwan and Japan.
Mizuho’s note calls out WFE growth assumptions of +13% year-over-year for 2026 and a further +12% for 2027, a marked acceleration versus prior expectations. The bank emphasizes that foundry and logic customers account for roughly 65% of Applied Materials’ revenues and points to substantially higher capex intensity from TSMC in 2026-28 compared with 2023-25, plus stronger tool spend from INTC in 2026. DRAM demand tied to high-bandwidth memory also represents a meaningful portion of the revenue mix, at about 30% of revenues in the note’s breakdown.
Geographic mix factors into the bullish stance as well: ex-China revenue exposure is roughly 70% of the company’s sales, which Mizuho views as a tailwind as global WFE spending accelerates. The firm sees these combined demand drivers as the core justification for the Outperform rating.
First Solar - BMO trims rating to Market Perform
On Thursday BMO Capital Markets downgraded First Solar Inc (NASDAQ:FSLR) to Market Perform and set a $263 price target. The principal concern in the note is the potential for a sizeable increase in module supply from Tesla (TSLA) and how that capacity could affect long-term module prices.
BMO frames the risk around Tesla’s ambitious capacity plans and the uncertainty about how much of Tesla’s excess module production might enter broader market channels beyond their own projects. The U.S. utility-scale market is assumed to be running at roughly 45-50 GW per year, against which First Solar’s current 14.1 GW production footprint and T1 Energy’s 2.1 GW with a potential 3.2 GW expansion could be pressured by a much larger entrant. Tesla’s stated 100 GW ambition is cited as a potential source of long-run pricing pressure or a persistent overhang on the shares in the analyst’s view.
BMO also reviews module average selling price (ASP) dynamics. The stock’s performance over the prior 12 months - up about 56% - implies that markets are pricing in strong ASPs, while First Solar’s valuation assumes a module cost of roughly $0.29 per watt. Reported backlog pricing sits around $0.30-$0.33 per watt. BMO notes that tariff-driven polysilicon protections, such as Section 232 actions, could lift ASPs into the upper $0.30s or low $0.40s per watt; the firm quantifies the sensitivity as about $23 per share for each $0.01 per watt increase. However, the research note also flags the possibility that policy carve-outs - for example, exemptions tied to semiconductor supply chain measures that could favor data center projects - may blunt some of the polysilicon-related upside, leaving long-run pricing and share valuation less certain.
Broadcom - Wolfe Research hikes AI-driven revenue forecasts
On Friday Wolfe Research moved Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO) to Outperform. The weekly summary references a $370 price target, while the fuller note presents a $400 target and a substantially more aggressive AI-related revenue build. Wolfe’s checks point to Google’s TPU scaling to roughly 7 million units by 2028 and to Alphabet making TPU capacity available to third parties, which Wolfe views as creating real competitive pressure in the AI ASIC market and a potential rival to incumbents.
Wolfe elevates CY27 revenue estimates for Broadcom to $154.5 billion and projects $16 in EPS for CY27, which the note frames as translating into a roughly 21x multiple on the CY27 EPS figure. The firm models CY26 AI ASIC revenue of $44 billion based on approximately 3.3 million TPU shipments, expanding to $78.4 billion in CY27 with 5.1 million unit shipments. In Wolfe’s segmentation TPE (TPU-related revenue) dominates while other AI projects account for smaller slices. Networking revenue is modeled to jump strongly as well - roughly 75% to $15.1 billion in CY26 and another 55% in CY27 - while non-AI semiconductor and software revenues remain largely steady.
On valuation, Wolfe sketches a base-case multiple in the low-20s, with a bull case where EPS reaches $18 if AI revenue were to expand further. The note calculates that the $400 target corresponds to roughly a 22x multiple on the bull-case earnings metric and observes that this is below Broadcom’s three-year average multiple of about 25x since the start of the AI cycle.
Market participants will be parsing these analyst revisions for implications on capital spending, pricing dynamics and competitive positioning across multiple industries - from adtech demand and auto supply chains to semiconductor capex cycles and solar module pricing. Each note relies on discrete assumptions - from advertiser adoption curves and merger synergies to TPU shipments and tariff sensitivities - that will be tested by company results and industry developments in the coming quarters.