Broker tips: Ophir Energy, Tesco, Sainsbury, Talk Talk

Ophir Energy surged after Credit Suisse upped its stance on the stock to ‘neutral’ from ‘underperform’ and lifted the price target to 100p from 90p following the capital markets day.

It said the Fortuna floating liquefied natural gas project in Equatorial Guinea was the features of the CMD, with surprisingly encouraging progress made so far.

“We partly de-risk the value of the project,” said CS, noting that Ophir seemed increasingly confident to sanction the project by mid-2016.

Credit Suisse said Ophir's gas in Equatorial Guinea is particularly well suited to FLNG as it is a biogenic gas resource, which requires minimal processing and negligible water handling capacity, thereby reducing the amount of processing equipment required. The absence of liquids production also helps in this regard.

Citi has upgraded Tesco to 'buy' but downgraded Sainsbury's to 'neutral' as the UK supermarket's big players jostle for position against the fast-expanding discounters in the ongoing industry price war.

The broker said that while the UK grocery backdrop remained challenging, it thought Tesco "has the scope to be more competitive, to rebuild its profitability and to repair its balance sheet".

While quarterly sales figures can be volatile, especially over a tougher Christmas compared to last year, the bank believes momentum in earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) is set to increase and, if needed Tesco could sell further assets.

Citi believes the group has "no alternative" but to invest £500m-£700m in price to disrupt the discounters but as they approach a 10-year lows the risk reward profile for the shares is "skewed to the upside", with Citi's new target price on Tesco of 230p.

Sainsbury's is, on the other hand, a "good house in a tough neighbourhood", with an encouraging response in sales volumes from Sainsbury’s recent initiatives that should allow it to ‘manage through’ but leaving Citi forecasting negative like-for-like (LFL) sales and margin erosion for "this year, next year and probably the year after".

Although well-positioned though its premium mass market positioning and London/South of England bias, and with a balance sheet "stretched but not stressed", Citi said Sainsbury is no doubt well aware it cannot afford to sit back in such a cut-throat market and is expected to "go again" with further price investments funded by further efficiencies.

A target price of 265p was cut from the previous 290p, with the rating downgraded from 'buy'.

Societe Generale downgraded TalkTalk to ‘sell’ from ‘hold’ and slashed its price target to 190p from 320p.

“Of course the cyber attack on 21 October was awful news. But more of a concern to us is how quickly TalkTalk fundamentals seem to have been deteriorating even before the attack hit,” the bank said.

SocGen explained it’s pencilling in a tough second half as the company fights to save subscribers. In addition, the bank is concerned there will be little improvement into full year 2017 as weak gross adds and churn, low pricing power and sliding gross margins offset savings benefits.

“We assume a slow recovery at best, rising debt and a halved dividend.”

It said the greatest surprise from TalkTalk’s first half results was just how weak the underlying business is performing.