Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day Highlights: eBay, JC Penney, Evergreen Solar and Navigant Consulting

Business Wire, Oct 19, 2007

CHICAGO -- Zacks Equity Research highlights eBay, Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) as the Bull of the Day and JC Penney (NYSE: JCP) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR) and Navigant Consulting (NYSE: NCI). Full analysis of all these stocks is available at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2676.

Here is a synopsis of all four stocks:

Bull of the Day:

Our Bull of the Day recommendation is for eBay, Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY). As we expected, eBay delivered a solid third quarter earnings report thanks to continued strength in PayPal and improvement in its Marketplace business. The company also boosted its outlook for 2007. We continue to expect eBay to deliver robust earnings growth over the next few years. As such, we reiterate our Buy rating and increase our six-month target price from $45 to $50, which is 30 times our 2008 EPS estimate.

Bear of the Day:

Our Bear of the Day recommendation is for JC Penney (NYSE: JCP). We are downgrading JCP shares from Hold to Sell. We previously thought JC Penney's strong operating model would help the company overcome weaker consumer spending. But the company's recent negative preannouncement demonstrates that weak consumer spending is already hurting JC Penney's results. As a result, we don t believe the company's soft guidance for the third quarter will be a one-off event. In our view, this is most likely the first in a string of earnings misses.

Analyst Blog:

The growth potential for the solar industry as a whole, and Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq: ESLR) in particular, remains a compelling story. Capacity expansion and near-term projected break-even earnings make it one of the fastest growing alternative energy stocks. Positive factors include significant new multi-year sales contracts, a new operating facility at Massachusetts, capacity expansions at EverQ over the next few years, improving operating efficiencies, technological upgrades, and new silicon supply contracts. However, continuing earnings losses, huge capital expenditures and earnings dilutive stock issuances may present risks to near-term share price upside potential. Accordingly, we maintain our BUY recommendation on ESLR with a six-month target price of $10.75. Price appreciation to our near-term valuation target represents 18.0% upside potential.

In light of the tempered expectations going forward, along with the uncertainty related to ongoing restructuring activities, we do not believe that an expanded multiple is justified at this time for shares of Navigant Consulting (NYSE: NCI). While the company's efforts to better structure its operations may result in improved operations in the future, we believe that investors will require tangible evidence that operations are actually improving before bidding the shares higher. Until we begin to see the benefits of restructuring activities in the form of improved financial results, we would not recommend that investors initiate new positions in shares of NCI at present levels. We rate the shares of NCI a Sell, with a six-month target price of $12.50, equating to approximately 15x our 2008 earnings estimate.

Get the full analysis of all these stocks by going to http://at.zacks.com/?id=2649.

About the Bull and Bear of the Day

Every day, the analysts at Zacks Equity Research select two stocks that are likely to outperform (Bull) or underperform (Bear) the markets over the next 3-6 months.

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