BUZZ-Top of the Street: Vodafone, BMW, RWE, Grifols

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

** Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) remains bullish on the European telecoms, seeing positive revenue and EBITDA growth in 2018 across the vast majority of its coverage universe

** Vodafone becomes Barclays' top pick, the broker ups co to "overweight" citing stronger data upside potential and cost execution

On the other end, it reduces KPN (Amsterdam: KPN.AS - news) to "equal weight", after its strong performance since Q2

** "Quality without catalyst": Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS-PB - news) says about BMW (EUREX: BMWE.EX - news) and cuts stock to "sell" seeing limited sector-relative value for investors in the next 12 mths

** Societe Generale (Swiss: 519928.SW - news) says RWE (IOB: 0FUZ.IL - news) 's generation assets are substantially undervalued, ups to "buy", adding that the current price offers an attractive entry point

** Top-ranked GS analyst, Julian Livingston-Booth, upgrades Hammerson (Frankfurt: 876140 - news) to "buy" on Intu Properties (LSE: INTU.L - news) acquisition which, according to the broker, will help move co "even further from the average"

INITIATIONS AND REINSTATEMENTS

** Credit Suisse (IOB: 0QP5.IL - news) starts coverage of Grifols (Madrid: 13138883.MA - news) with a "neutral" rating, seeing limited scope for a re-rating as the risk-reward is in line with cons at current levels

(*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.)