Broker tips: Barclays, Aggreko, Retail stocks

2nd Jan 2013 10:42

Barclays was performing well on Wednesday morning after Investec hiked its target price from 260p to 285p and hailed the lender as its 'preferred UK domestic bank'. Despite an impressive 79% rally over the past five months, the broker said that the shares are still trading "only in line with loss-making RBS and at a peculiar discount to Lloyds". These latter two banks are rated 'sell' by Investec."However, while recent operational performance has met or exceeded market expectations, and we certainly make no downgrade to our own underlying earnings forecasts, wider obstacles to further progress remain," said analyst Ian Gordon.Jefferies has slashed its target price for temporary power and temperature control solutions group Aggreko by over a fifth from 2,535p to 2,000p following the group's pre-close update.However, with shares now down 25% over the past three months - the worst performance on the FTSE 100 - the broker has maintained its 'buy' rating on the stock, saying that it remains confident in the medium-term investment case.Panmure Gordon has highlighted ASOS and Dunelm as its 'conviction buys' in the UK retail sector ahead of the critical Christmas reporting season in the next few weeks.The broker said: "Our top large cap general retail sector pick is category killer and number one UK homewares market share holder Dunelm [rated 'buy']. Our model suggests that Dunelm could return another £80m-90m to shareholders by FY2016E." ASOS ('buy') saw its target price raised from 2,875p to 3,050p.BC