BUZZ-Top of the Street: Porsche, Micro Focus, SAP

A round-up of notable broker activity this morning from Europe's top-ranked* analysts:

** Five-star ranked Bank of America Merrill Lynch upgrades Porsche to "buy" from "underperform". Says auto industry is "trapped in value" and it has not turned positive on the auto sector. It prefers stocks where there is strategic change and restructuring, and tyre makers. It has also upgraded VW, Michelin (Paris: FR0000121261 - news) and Norma in recent days. Over the last year, the number of buys on Porsche has doubled, while the number of sells is at its lowest in 2 yrs

** Investec (LSE: INVP.L - news) cuts Micro Focus to "sell" on escalating concerns around HPE software business integration challenges, underlying performance, size of cost-cut requirements and future top-line declines

** Deutsche Bank (IOB: 0H7D.IL - news) ups SAP (Amsterdam: AP6.AS - news) to "buy" on stabilizing margins from the co's cloud business, which it managed to grow in double digits in 2017 while still growing its software licensing and support business

(*Analyst rankings from Thomson Reuters StarMine. Scale is from 1-star to 5-star with 5 being best. Analysts ranked on earnings accuracy as well as relative performance of recommendations over trailing 12-month & 24-month periods.)