Kellogg (K, $68.56) got a rating boost and price target hike from Bank of America analysts

Kellogg recently got a rating upgrade form analysts at Bank of America.

The analysts at Bank of America boosted their rating on the cereal maker’s  stock to buy from underperform.

They also raised their 12-month price target for the shares to $75 from $53. This is based on a multiple of 17.6 times on earnings-per-share estimate of $4.26 of calendar-year 2021. This represents a 10% premium to the company’s peers, according to the analysts.

The analysts, led by Bryan Spillane, are expecting the Kellogg’s organic sales to grow +2.3% in fiscal 2020, and net sales to rise by + 0.1%. The analysts are projecting operating profit growth (excluding the Keebler divestiture) of +6%.

According to the analysts, Kellogg has taken measures to boost sales growth over the past two years, even as profits have lagged. The analysts are expecting things to improve further in 2020, as they believe that “disruptive actions” to propel growth have been taken by the company – something that should allow more room to focus on restoring profitability, according to the analysts.

“While there is still work to do in U.S. cereal, we view Kellogg as well positioned to drive sustained low single-digit organic sales growth going forward,” the analysts wrote in a note.

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Sergey Savastiouk|Expert

Sergey Savastiouk, Ph.D. has a degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow University and has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, investor, manager, and mathematician. His professional expertise is in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling, system and pattern analysis, and software and hardware system integration. He has served as the CEO of several hi-tech start-up companies and nonprofit organizations, which has given him proven capabilities in business strategy for high-tech start-up companies, market assessment, company formation, team building, product development, marketing, and sales. He has published numerous articles in journals and magazines on related fields. As a retail investor, he spent 15 years developing his proprietary trading and quantitative algorithms (now Tickeron’s A.I.), which brought him significant returns in trading the stock market. His current work and goal in founding Tickeron is to bring professional, sophisticated stock market analysis capabilities to retail investors via an easy-to-use interface.