Broker tips: Barclays, HSBC, Sage, WM Morrison

8th May 2014 12:48

Investec has applauded Barclays' Group Strategy Update on Thursday, after the bank announced a new round of jobs cuts, mainly in its investment bank (IB), as part of its 'bold simplification'."Barclays is already a low-risk, profitable bank, but today's 'reset' is about rightsizing the bank to reflect a smaller addressable IB revenue pool and to deliver improved/sustainable returns," he said.UBS has lowered its target price for HSBC from 665p to 630p and kept a 'neutral' rating following the bank's first-quarter results, saying that it is still waiting on revenue momentum to resume."For HSBC to re-rate we continue to believe it will need to see an end of de-leveraging and a return of revenue growth at a group level," UBS said.Sage's first-half results were more or less in line with forecasts, but currency headwinds and the departure of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Guy Berruyer are causes for concern, according to Numis Securities."It feels like currency headwinds will push numbers down 2-3% which, coupled with the CEO departure and the relatively full [...] rating, means we think the shares could be slightly down on these results," said the broker, which maintained a 'hold' rating and 420p target price for the accountancy software stock.Shore Capital Stockbrokers remains a seller of WM Morrison after the supermarket's first-quarter update showed that "dire trading persists"."With such weak trading, we cannot yet call whether or not we have come to the end of the downgrade cycle for Morrison's. Additionally, we are not yet confident that the contagion of gross margin investment by the supermarkets has come to an end. Until the point it is reached it is equally challenging to be more positive on the group's shares, we reiterate our 'sell' recommendation."BC