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Home Financial Banking AstraZeneca and Antofagasta upgraded and in focus
AstraZeneca and Antofagasta upgraded and in focus PDF Print E-mail
Written by Sam Coventry   
Monday, 08 March 2010 15:18

Two FTSE 100 stocks are in focus at The Economy News this afternoon. As always our afternoon analysis is guided by the latest broker ratings:




Antofagasta (LON:ANTO) received a broker upgrade from Nomura. Nomura have targeted 1100 for the stock; that is 10.78% higher than Friday's close of 993.

Antofagasta is higher by 1.01% on the FTSE 100 at present.

Big day for Antofagasta tomorrow

Antofagasta posts preliminary results tomorrow.

The copper miner had to put operations at flagship Los Pelambres mine in Chile on hold after the recent earthquake temporarily disrupted power supplies.

It said operations in Antofagasta — about 1,500km north of Chile's capital Santiago — were not disrupted but investors will have questions about the earthquake's impact.

Nick Raynor, analyst at The Share Centre said: “These figures will not take into account the recent disastrous earthquake in Chile — fears that the disaster may affect the ability to mine in the area have caused prices for the commodity to soar.” Last month, Antofagasta posted a 7.4% fall in annual copper production but said it would rise this year because of expansion projects.

AstraZeneca upgraded by Morgan Stanley

AstraZeneca (LON:AZN), the pharma giant, has been upgraded by the team at Morgan Stanley over the course of the day.

AstraZeneca shares have now got a new target of 3540, that is 18.18% higher than the companies last closing price. On Friday AstraZeneca closed at 2995.

Currently the stock is lower by 1.54%.

News out today is that AstraZeneca's cancer drug Recentin failed in a head to head late stage trial with Roche's Avastin in colorectal cancer patients, hurting the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker's shares on Monday.

The company said the data, which analysts had expected to be negative for Recentin, showed the experimental drug did not meet its primary endpoint in the Horizon phase III study.

But it said it would wait for fresh data from a second late stage trial before making any decisions on filing the drug for approval.

"While we recognised that challenging Avastin would be a high hurdle, it is still disappointing, despite evidence of clinical activity with Recentin, not to have met the primary endpoint in this study," Astra's head of oncology Alan Barge said in a statement.