Weekly Reports | 10:00 AM
Weekly update on stockbroker recommendation, target price, and earnings forecast changes.
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor FNArena
Guide:
The FNArena database tabulates the views of eight major Australian and international stockbrokers: Citi, Bell Potter, Macquarie, Morgan Stanley, Morgans, Ord Minnett, Shaw and Partners and UBS.
For the purpose of broker rating correlation, Outperform and Overweight ratings are grouped as Buy, Neutral is grouped with Hold and Underperform and Underweight are grouped as Sell to provide a Buy/Hold/Sell (B/H/S) ratio.
Ratings, consensus target price and forecast earnings tables are published at the bottom of this report.
Summary
Period: Monday December 15 to Friday December 19, 2025
Total Upgrades: 4
Total Downgrades: 5
Net Ratings Breakdown: Buy 62.01%; Hold 30.16%; Sell 7.83%
Stockbroking analysts are winding down as the end of year approaches. This will be the final update for 2025.
Not unexpected, the numbers of upgrades and downgrades in ratings for individual ASX-listed companies has sharply reduced, though there's still plenty of activity (even in the face of a rather lacklustre share market).
For the week ending Friday, 19th December 2025, FNArena recorded four upgrades and five downgrades.
A general sector update on Australian banks by stockbroker Morgans generated two of the upgrades (Bank of Queensland and Judo Capital) while Morgan Stanley responded to a weaker share price for cheap bling retailer Lovisa Holdings.
Treasury Wine Estates delivered yet another awful market update, but Citi analysts were brave enough to decide this might well be as bad as it gets for the former market darling of premium wines.
Citi's upgrade (to Neutral) was countered by Ord Minnett's downgrade where more downside scenarios are still seen as a valid option. National Storage is under take-over interest, which explains UBS' downgrade (the share price has done its dough).
Macquarie's analysis has spotted increased competition on the horizon for CSL, which triggered this week's downgrade. Boss Energy's on-the-ground troubles (pun intended) continue and triggered a downgrade from Citi.
Another pressure-cooker straggler, the ASX, has to put aside additional capital and thus flagged less dividends for shareholders. Ord Minnett downgraded to Hold in response.
The total number of Buy ratings for the eight stockbrokers monitored daily by FNArena has now risen to 62%; that's as high as it gets from an historical point of view (see chart below).
Neutral/Hold ratings sit above 30% and the remaining 7.83% are Sells. The latter percentage is historically extremely low.
Movements in average target prices for the week are heavily skewed to the downside, thanks to negative market updates by aforementioned Treasury Wine Estates and Boss Energy, with CSL, GrainCorp and the ASX equally lining up for the week's negative top ten.
Netwealth is paying compensation to investors caught by the collapse of Shield and First Guardian investment funds and this places it on position ten of the week's downward adjustments to price targets.
On the positive side of the ledger, we find Flight Centre, for which market sentiment is noticeably improving, including among analysts. Last week the company announced another acquisition and improved guidance for the year ahead.
The rest of the week's top ten is heavily dominated by gold and copper miners as sector analysts continue to lift their pricing forecasts.
The week's top ten for positive updates to earnings forecasts is --surprise, surprise-- equally dominated by mining companies.
The top five on the negative side, led by Treasury Wine, see hefty downgrades coming their way; the other half are hardly worth paying attention to.
Meteoric Resources and South32 are flagging to investors this year's resurgence for the mining sector is not a guaranteed good news story for everybody in the sector.
Chalice Mining's presence is related to stockbroker Morgans no longer updating its research and forecasts, and should thus not be taken at face value.
Upgrade
BANK OF QUEENSLAND LIMITED ((BOQ)) Upgrade to Accumulate from Hold by Morgans .B/H/S: 1/3/2
Morgans upgrades Bank of Queensland to Accumulate from Hold due to the recent share price weakness, while tweaking EPS forecasts down by -1% for FY26 and lifting FY27 by 1%.
The analyst notes the bank's asset base is more concentrated than its larger peers in the very competitive home lending market, but it has disadvantages in scale, funding costs and technology compared to the majors.
As the stock is now trading below the broker's intrinsic value estimate, with an attractive yield, it has been upgraded.
Target price is raised to $7.03 from $6.87.
JUDO CAPITAL HOLDINGS LIMITED ((JDO)) Upgrade to Buy from Accumulate by Morgans .B/H/S: 6/0/0
Morgans upgrades Judo Capital to Buy from Accumulate due to the recent share price weakness and lowers the FY27 EPS estimate by -3%.
The analyst notes Judo does not aim to pay dividends, as capital will be reinvested to support loan growth. While noting the bank is higher risk with no dividend yield, it is also a challenger operating entirely in the SME business banking sector.
This is expected to underpin earnings growth over FY26-FY27 and the broker reckons the stock could be worth $3 per share by the end of the decade.
Target price slips to $2.02 from $2.04.
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