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An employee of the Internet company Facebook walks through the courtyard of the company campus in Menlo Park, California.

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When Wall Street analysts take a more bullish stance on a particular stock, it could mean that the name is undervalued and has room to run.

The stocks mentioned in this article have either received a bullish coverage initiation or a significant price target boost from analysts with a proven track record of success.

TipRanks' analyst forecasting service works to pinpoint the Street's best-performing analysts, or the pros with the highest success rate and average return per rating. These metrics factor in the number of ratings published by each analyst.

Wall Street's best-performing analysts have turned more bullish on these five stocks.

According to Needham analyst Scott Berg, Thryv Holdings is "Thryv-ing in the hot marketing software space." As such, the top analyst initiated coverage with a Buy rating and set a $42 price target. This implies that shares could gain 31% over the next 12 months.

"Thryv competes in the Marketing Software space, which on its own, can support significant long-term growth, we believe," Berg said. He added, "Thryv's long-term product strategy is rooted in the large segment for Marketing Software, which Gartner estimates had over $16 billion of total spend in 2019 growing at 20.7% per year."

What makes the company an industry stand-out? The analyst points to its legacy Marketing Services segment, which includes the Yellow Pages brand.

"We think the legacy business represents a large, cash-generating, low-cost, customer acquisition channel that assures steady demand from established companies seeking more modern marketing solutions," Berg said.

Additionally, Thryv recently released ThryvPay, its integrated payment solution that makes it possible for small and medium-sizedbusinesses to accept credit card and ACH payments through its platform or through a dedicated mobile app.

This new product, in Berg's opinion, is "not fully discounted by the current share price," with the analyst noting that the "payments opportunity is large and adds model optionality."

Berg also highlights the fact that the company's key software as a service metrics have gotten stronger over the past few quarters, which he believes could "translate to accelerated revenue growth from a pandemic trough." Thryv also started working on new go-to-market channels at the end of last year, and this has already had a positive effect on lead generation and pipeline growth.

Berg is the eighth best-performing analyst on Wall Street, thanks to his stellar 77% success rate and 33.9% average return per rating.

Two monopoly lawsuits filed by the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of states that sought to break up Facebook have just been dismissed. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg believes that the FTC didn't "clearly define the market" and argues that its claims about Facebook's share of the market were "too speculative and conclusory to go forward."

Boasberg also noted, "Although the court does not agree with all of Facebook's contentions here, it ultimately concurs that the agency's complaint is legally insufficient and must therefore be dismissed."

Following this development, Bank of America Securities analyst Justin Post reiterated a Buy rating on the social media company. In a further bullish signal, the analyst boosted the price target from $390 to $400, putting the upside potential at 14%.

Expounding on his even more optimistic approach, Post said, "While we would expect the FTC/states to refile, given the prep time that undoubtedly went into the original filing, we see this ruling as an important reminder of the challenges the government faces in establishing that Facebook (or its large-cap peers) have illegal monopolies."

After multiple calls with legal experts, Post thinks the likelihood that Facebook will be broken up is very low, based on not only history but also precedent. "We view this dismissal as a positive step based on: 1) highlights the hurdles U.S. antitrust enforcers face in trying to break up tech companies, and 2) a noticeable change from continued negative regulatory news over the last year," he commented.

That being said, the court's decision is "a small win in a long battle," as laws surrounding the antitrust environment could be changed by both Congress and the EU.

Although the new privacy protections for Apple's iOS 14 fueled some investor concern as it will require apps to request permission to track users, Post remains unfazed. "Though increasing adoption of iOS 14.5 poses the risk of a bigger revenue impact in 3Q, we continue to think FB has strong ability to capitalize on shopping this year, and the Street will likely stay optimistic on several under-monetized and under-valued FB assets (Messenger, WhatsApp, Watch, Reels, AR/VR) to drive growth post-2021," the analyst stated.

With a 76% success rate and 30.2% average return per rating, Post scores the #38 spot on TipRanks' list.

Roper Technologies develops software and engineered products for a range of end-markets including health care, transportation, commercial construction, food, energy, water, education, as well as academic research.

For Oppenheimer's Christopher Glynn, the company's long-term growth story appears strong, with the analyst stating that the runway is "still attractive." Even more optimistic about Roper's prospects, the five-star analyst bumped up the price target from $505 to $560 (16% upside potential) in addition to reiterating a Buy rating.

Glynn commented, "We see continued headroom for ROP shares, noting: (1) strong +hsd organic outlook Q2Q4 2021, supported by all four segments and key underlying divisions; (2) rapid debt reduction (post Vertafore/other bolt-ons) yielding to renewed acquisition pipeline execution out of 2021; and (3) overall competitive differentiation and gross margin profiles across the enterprise."

In the first quarter of 2021, Roper paid down roughly $500 million in debt, which brought net debt/EBITDA down from 4.7x to 4.2x sequentially. So, if ROP allocates all free cash flow for deals in 2022-2023, Glynn estimates approximately 2.5x PF net leverage for YE23. Additionally, the analyst thinks "greater deal flow/3.5x-plus leverage would likely support ~$1.00-plus free cash flow per share."

It should also be noted that adjusted EPS rose 18% on 20%-plus EBITDA, with organic top-line growth landing at -1%.

"The Q2 2021 organic comparison eases to (3)%/Q2 2020 from +4%/Q1 2020, and, coupled with various markets positioned to improve sequentially (at stages during 2021; TransCore, Neptune, Deltek, CBORD, iTradeNetwork, Process & Industrial), should afford a high quality path relative to guidance for $14.7515.00 adjusted EPS," Glynn said.

What's more, along with raw accretion, Glynn believes the deals "work well long-term" for Roper. With this in mind, he forecasts 6% EBITDA [compound annual growth rate] for both Neptune and TransCore, which are two of the company's larger anchor deals from the early 2000s.

Given Glynn's 69% success rate and 20.5% average return per rating, he is one of the top 170 analysts tracked by TipRanks.

Cohu just scored a thumbs up from Rosenblatt Securities analyst Scott Graham, thanks to multiple top-line catalysts. In addition to initiating coverage at Buy, the analyst put a $65 price target on the stock, suggesting 88% upside potential.

Graham acknowledges that concerns related to mix have "restrained the stock and reduced its valuation relative to peers." However, he believes that Cohu will outperform over the next year due to "high quality earnings growth and a building cash balance/acquisition opportunity."

The firm tells clients that the semiconductor space is in a "Mother of All Cycles" period, as a result of "continuing penetration of AI in major semi sub-sectors." Based on the firm's estimates, this cycle could last through 2023 and beyond.

"We believe COHU, with the Auto and Industrial markets having turned up, is now on this train. We expect COHU's sales to continue to benefit from this backdrop and its targeted strategies which seek to tap faster-growth niches and seculars in its markets," Graham noted.

The analyst highlights the fact that COHU's sales are correlated to Wafer Fabrication Equipment capex, which is set to rise 20% to 30% this year. Given current trade estimates, this market is currently valued at $70 billion-plus, with it poised to reach $100 billion in the next five years. On top of this, the company's SOC test segment is "in a market benefiting from increasing IC content in devices/applications, namely smartphones, autos, industrial and compute," according to Graham.

When it comes to Cohu's strategy, the company is taking a "targeted" approach, in Graham's opinion. Not only is Cohu scaling its semi test sales, but it is also increasing its penetration of the auto space and boosting its contractor attachment rates, which the analyst believes could fuel an improvement in margins.

As for recurring revenues, Graham sees this as an "undervalued aspect of the stock's valuation" because although they might grow at a slower pace than systems sales, they are "more resilient in down cycles and have higher margins than systems sales."

Currently, Graham is tracking a 69% success rate and 14.9% average return per rating.

Even with 50% sales growth for CY21E "in some of the most desirable, duopolistic large total addressable market ($70 billion-plus) markets in semis," Bank of America Securities analyst Vivek Arya points out that Advanced Micro Devices has lagged its peers in the space year-to-date. That being said, the analyst still has high hopes for the company's growth prospects.

To this end, Arya not only kept a Buy rating on the semiconductor player but also gave the price target a lift, with the figure moving from $110 to $120 (33% upside potential).

Arya points to three catalysts that could propel shares higher including a possible product push-out from Intel (INTC) as well as the recent Google endorsement, which could lead to a breakout for AMD's data center segment.

When comparing AMD's Milan and Intel's Ice Lake, Arya tells investors that the former's offering is superior in terms of both single and multi-thread workloads and "Arm-based cloud instances in scale-out workloads where Arm historically had an edge."

Expounding on this, Arya stated, "This clear outperformance should allay competitive fears, especially as AMD next-gen 5nm products ramp in 2022 while media reports now suggest INTC 10nm Sapphire Rapids is not expected until Q2 2022 with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) 5nm equivalent products (INTC 7nm) not until at least 2023. AMD is already seeing results with accelerated server share in Q1 2021."

Additionally, AMD's share of the supercomputing market has increased by more than 2x in the last six months, and 5x in the last year, which shows "AMD's improved competitiveness in HPC, a strong leading indicator for future cloud/enterprise momentum," in Arya's opinion.

He added, "Even more notable, AMD now powers three of the top ten supercomputers, the same number as INTC for first time ever."

Looking at the valuation, Arya calls it "compelling" at "just 6x CY22 EV/sales for 25%-plus sales growth from 2020- 2023E." This reflects a significant discount to other infotech companies.

Arya's 70% success rate and 28.1% average return per rating support his #83 ranking on TipRanks' list of best-performing analysts.

Link:
Wall Street's top analysts have turned more bullish on these stocks - CNBC

ISRO is offering two free online courses on Geospatial Modelling and Geospatial Technology. Students and professionals can apply for the same and get certificates upon completion. (Photo: PTI)

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is offering two free online courses on Geospatial Modelling and Geospatial Technology through its Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) centre. Students and professionals can apply for the same and get certificates upon completion.

The free online certificate courses are titled Geospatial Modelling for Watershed Management, and Geospatial Technology for Hydrological Modelling.

The two online courses are for both students and professionals who are interested in learning about the fields of soil and water conservation.

Geospatial technologies including remote sensing, GIS and GPS has emerged as a powerful tool in recent years for assessment and monitoring of watershed management.

Course dates: August 2 to 6, 2021

What will students learn?

Eligibility

Note: There are limited number of seats and registration will be done on a first-come first-serve basis.

How to register

How to attend classes

How to get certificate

Hydrological modelling is an effective and essential tool for assessment, prediction and management of water resources, hydrological parameters and water movement/demand/use scenarios.

Course dates: July 19 to 30, 2021

What will students learn?

Eligibility

Note: There are limited number of seats and registration will be done on a first-come first-serve basis.

How to register

How to attend classes

How to get certificate

Read: ISRO launches free online courses for students, professionals: Check details here

Read: How to get an IIT internship: How to apply, sample questions and pro tips from ex-interns

Read: Want to work with Amazon? Here's how to apply for a job at Amazon India

Click here for IndiaToday.ins complete coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

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ISRO is offering two free online courses with certificates in July-August - India Today

New tools quantify costs, benefits of urban greenspace investments

New technology could help cities around the world improve peoples lives while saving billions of dollars. Urban InVEST, a suite of free, open-source software modelscreates maps to help decision-makers understand the links between nature and human wellbeing and evaluate the tradeoffs between development and conservation.

Even as developers and city planners increasingly see the benefits tree-lined paths and community gardens, they lacked detailed information about where a garden might help protect a neighborhood from flooding or trees might lower air temperatures. Researchers with the Stanford Natural Capital Project developed the free, open source software to help city planners visualize where investments in natural elements, such as parks and marshlands, can provide community benefits.

Urban InVEST uses spatially explicit biophysical and socio-economic models so users can quantify and map the way various urban designs can impact multiple urban services, such as water management, heat island mitigation and mental health benefits. By showing the costs and benefits to communities by socioeconomic status and vulnerability, the software helps design cities that are better for both people and nature, said Anne Guerry, chief strategy officer and lead scientist at the Natural Capital Project.

Urban nature is a multitasking benefactor the trees on your street can lower temperatures so your apartment is cooler on hot summer days, she said. At the same time, theyre soaking up the carbon emissions that cause climate change, creating a free, accessible place to stay healthy through physical activity and just making your city a more pleasant place to be.

The software combines environmental data, like temperature patterns, with social demographics and economic data, like income levels, according to the Stanford News Service. Cities can upload their own data or access a variety of open data sources, from NASA satellites to local weather stations.

The Urban InVEST toolset features models for terrestrial, freshwater, marine, and coastal ecosystems, as well as a number of helper tools that help users locate and input data and with understanding and visualizing outputs.

Were answering three crucial questions with this software: where in a city is nature providing what benefits to people, how much of each benefit is it providing and who is receiving those benefits? said Perrine Hamel, lead author on a new paper about the software published inUrban Sustainabilityand livable cities program lead at the Stanford Natural Capital Project at the time of research.

Urban InVEST was tested in several cities, including Shenzhen, China, Paris and Minneapolis. It builds on the Natural Capital Projects existing open-source Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) platform, which is used in over 185 countries.

In Shenzhen, China, the researchers used Urban InVEST to determine that natural infrastructure like parks, grassland and forest could limit severe storm damage by soaking up rain and diverting floodwaters, avoiding $25 billion in damages. Trees and parks were reducing Shenzhen the daily air temperature in by 5.4 degrees during hot summer days, a value of $71,000 per day.

In Paris, the software showed where investments in more greenspace in low-income neighborhoods without access to such spaces could improve health and wellbeing in an equitable way.

In the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, private golf courses were selling off their land for development in the face of declining revenues. City planners, trying to decide whether to use the land for neighborhoods or parkland, used Urban InVEST to better understand the different outcomes. The software indicated that new parks could increase urban cooling, keep river waters clean, support bee pollinators and sustain dwindling pockets of biodiversity, Stanford officials said. New residential development, on the other hand, would increase temperatures, pollute freshwater and decrease habitat for bees and other biodiversity.

Cities, more than any other ecosystems, are designed by people. Why not be more thoughtful about how we design the places where most of us spend our time? Guerry said. With Urban InVEST, city governments can bring all of natures benefits to residents and visitors. They can address inequities and build more resilient cities, resulting in better long-term outcomes for people and nature.

About the Author

Connect with the GCN staff on Twitter @GCNtech.

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New tools quantify costs, benefits of urban greenspace investments - GCN.com

Anti-virus mogul and Bitcoin bull, John McAfee, allegedly committed suicide while waiting to be extradited to the US in a Spanish jail. He was accused of evading tax for four years.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, two brothers have reportedly made off with nearly $4 billion in cryptocurrencies. They told investors that the exchange was hacked, but the authorities have been unable to track down the founders for more questions.

Yet, the crypto community carries on. El Salvador has created an official digital wallet to help its citizens hold Bitcoin and is offering anyone who signs up $30 in the cryptocurrency as a reward.

On the other side of the ocean, Dubai is hosting The Bitcoin Fund on its exchange. This makes the Arabian country the first to have a digital asset-based fund in the Middle East and North Africa marking a huge sign of adoption within the region.

Heres our weekly roundup of the best cryptocurrency news from the week gone by:

See more here:
The biggest crypto heist of all time, free money and tax on crypto transactions heres what happened the wor - Business Insider India

We have come a long way from glitching Windows screens to adware and just plain annoyance viruses. Windows 10 today doesnt feel as unsafe as the operating system in its earlier days. Viruses are mostly controlled by Microsofts in-built Windows Defender and with proper digital hygiene, tech-savvy people can identify phishing attempts and viruses manually. Considering how Windows automatically protects you from digital threats, do you need an antivirus software in 2021?

While yes, viruses have been controlled to some extent in modern operating systems, we have also seen some malicious applications plague digital users in the recent past. WannaCry was the infamous ransomware cyptoworm that encrypted around 200,000 computers across 150 countries. Mydoom, a worm, is considered one of the fastest spreading email worms with computers getting affected even today since its inception in 2004. As security has changed, so have the many viruses that infect your computer. While in the past, viruses were mainly designed to annoy or display unwanted information, the current landscape of the digital world has also given rise to more complex viruses with a specific purpose. Malware, like Stuxnet, have even been used to disable and disrupt nuclear power plants and engage in cyber warfare.

Antivirus software like Windows Defender is good in detecting known threats, blocking unwanted applications and network attacks but newer and newer viruses are developed which might not be identified in virus databases. These new variants can easily pass through antivirus scans and by the time they are detected, they might already have wreaked havoc on your computer. And even more than direct network attacks, social engineering infections are also one of the most common ways that computers are infected. If you dont know what to look for, an exact copy of Facebooks login page might be a phishing site.

While known threats are easy to protect against, it is the newer ones that use unknown vulnerabilities within a system that internet users need to be more worried about. The power of your computer to be used as a botnet and access to your personal data can be disastrous these days. Third-party antivirus softwares, while providing all the services of Windows Defender, also offer some great tools to keep you that extra bit safe on the internet.

Antivirus softwares like Kaspersky Internet Security, ESET Internet Security, Avast Antivirus, McAfee and BitDefender are all available in Nepal through eSewa or Khalti. All of these antivirus softwares have free versions as well but if you want to pay for the service, there are local dealers for them. For a free service, however, we recommend staying with Windows Defender since the integrated software works really well with Windows and is very light on resources. Free versions of any of these third-party services would add a few new features but for the most part, Windows Defender should work fine.

Paid versions of these services are where their value truly resides. Almost all of the third-party antivirus softwares come equipped with machine learning and artificial intelligence-based threat detection. Some, like Kaspersky and McAfee, also offer Password Managers to help complicate your passwords and keep them safe. Further features like Ransomware remediation help you protect your files even after your computer has already been infected by a ransomware. Threat detection for all of the aforementioned antivirus software are impeccable, helped by the fact that threat detections are now shared across all antivirus softwares. But for added protection to privacy, some also offer VPN services and software webcam kill switches.

Extra security is all well and good, but it doesnt help very much if they hog all of your system resources. And in the past, antivirus softwares have been notorious resource hogs, completely freezing your computer while an active scan is running. With how invisible Windows Defender is, this doesnt seem to be a problem with Microsofts in-house offering, but what about the third-party ones? Installing any new antivirus is definitely going to take up some of your system resources but its not as bad today as it was in the past. This is also because hardware has continued to evolve over the past decade, and what felt like heavy programs in the past, now run easily on one core of your CPU, leaving you with plenty of parallel processors to work off of. Kaspersky, ESET, and McAfee all raise system resources by a couple of percent while idle, but these are minimal increases that dont necessarily affect system processes unless theyre running active scans. Norton was the heaviest and still, system performance was only slightly affected.

Considering everything, would I recommend installing an antivirus on your modern 2021 computer? Absolutely. The added protection offered by any of these security solutions will help not only protect your computer from infections but rather act reactively to malicious software as well. Additional services like Password Managers and VPNs are a must use today, and even if you dont end up shelling out money for any of these antiviruses, free Password Managers (BitWarden) should be an essential program for any internet denizen to keep their online accounts safe. Getting one of these paid antivirus software is definitely going to help protect your data better, but they also come at a cost. Which is why, we recommend the default Windows Defender too, for those looking for a free solution. Viruses arent what they used to be, theyre used more nefariously today than ever before which is why thinking about cyber security should be a must to keep yourself safe in the digital world.

Read more from the original source:
Do you still need an antivirus software in 2021? - The Kathmandu Post